Twilight Bastille
by apsara
Summary: Rei Hino wanted nothing more than to leave the misery of Japanese internment camp life behind...until Dr. Jacen Amos arrived at Manzanar, and everything she thought she wanted slipped away like fine desert sand. AU, Senshi/Shitennou, Rei/Jadeite.
1. Recurring Dreams

I don't own Sailormoon – but the story is mine, historical inaccuracies and all :)

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**Twilight Bastille: Chapter #1 – Recurring Dreams**

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_Her small, bare feet pounded down the uneven steps of the old shrine, slipping slightly on the curling tendrils of moss. There was a smell of damp stone and dew-kissed leaves in the air and Rei ran faster than she had ever run in her life, because if she couldn't catch him now, he'd be gone forever._

_Distantly behind her, she could hear her grandfather shouting at her – "Slow down!" but Rei didn't have the time to hear or obey._

_There he was. Her father was just getting into the limousine._

_His manservant closed the door with a firm click._

_On the other side, the chauffeur's door slammed shut._

_With a low growl, the motor whirred and started._

_She ran still faster, and so focused was she on the long stretch of black machine before her that Rei barely noticed that she'd tripped and fallen. So she sat there in the wet grass, staring dumbly at the car as it coughed thick sepia smoke its way up the lane. Past the creaking shrine gate and then onto open road, gone gone gone. Her grandfather stood beside her._

_"What did I say about slowing down, little one?" he chided, helping her to her feet._

_Rei blinked up at him, uncomprehending, before she buried her face in his robes smelling of cedar and cotton and sobbed._

_"Why couldn't Papa wait for me? Why couldn't he…? Why…"_

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Rei sat up, wide awake, gasping short breaths. For a few moments, the memory of the dream was immediate enough to numb the stinging pains that chased each other up and down her taut back and neck, but the respite was brief and she winced as yet another night on a hardwood handout of a bed caught up with her. The smells of home, now nowhere but in her hazy, gray-edged dreams, still lingered.

"Rei, are you awake yet?" her grandfather's soft voice emerged from behind the curtain.

"Yes, Grandfather, I'm up," she called back.

She disentangled herself from the thin sheets twisted between her legs. Her thin night chemise was slightly damp with perspiration, clinging to the too-sharp bones at her hips. Hurriedly, Rei stood and splashed her face with water from the basin near her bed, washing the taste of morning from her mouth. The water was already warm. Not a good sign; such heat in the air at dawn foreshadowed a blistering day ahead. For the sake of modesty – she certainly didn't need the warmth – Rei tossed a threadbare robe over her chemise.

"I'm just finishing dusting up, child."

She began the always-arduous process of brushing her hair, which pooled out beside her over the whisper-thin sheets and onto the gritty floor in a slippery, heavy mass of living silk. Her toes idly patterned the dust. Rei's thoughts turned almost immediately to her dream, one that had plagued her since she was a child. It was a dream she had all too frequently, one that affected her more than she cared to admit. _It's been years. Let it go._ Somehow, she couldn't.

_Of course Papa couldn't wait,_ Rei mused, failing to turn her thoughts elsewhere. _Couldn't wait to get us off his hands_…_out of Japan, out of his life._ _What good was any of it? – _convent girls' academy, the lavish allowance, a huge ranch in the valley, awkwardly large for Grandfather and herself, accustomed as they were to their small shrine of wood and stone. Rei hated how her father had bought their compliance, hated his money, but times being what they were, she didn't have a choice.

_And now where are we stuck living?_

Well, even his wealth couldn't save them now, not while the war continued with no clear end in sight.

She was distracted by Grandfather shuffling in. He held a small, dust-filled tray and a brush. Rei immediately took the tray from him, bending to kiss the top of his head in affectionate greeting. She crouched by the bed, scraping the ever-present sand and dust off the floor and into the tray. He maneuvered himself onto the bed slowly, and reached for the glass of water on the nightstand.

"Breakfast in a bit…do you think it will be powdered sugar or raisins on the rice today? When do you think the chefs will finally learn?" Grandfather wondered absently, only half-complaining. _He says the same thing every morning. Calls it "making polite conversation."_ Rei rolled her dark eyes in reply, just as she always did.

"When they learn that green tea doesn't come in a bag and baka yaro doesn't mean 'good morning'."

They laughed a bit over that one, and then allowed companionable silence to take hold, each lost in their own thoughts.

Finding no more dirt between her toes, Rei made to stand when Grandfather suddenly put down his glass with a clink and took one of her work-roughened hands between his leathery palms. His tone was unusually sober.

"Listen, child. Dr. Phifer has been transferred to Arizona, and I just talked to the new supervising physician earlier this morning. Arrived last week – very young, very…ah, never mind, there's a bit of a problem with my medicines, you see…Dr. Amos says…" he hesitated, seeing her lips tighten.

"He says that he can't get my medicines for me anymore. That the rationing guidelines have tightened, and there's a shortage…" Grandfather trailed off as Rei pulled her hand from his and began to pace around the tiny room, brow pensive. _So much like her grandmother,_ he reminisced, _always demanding. Like her father too, I suppose, though I won't say it._ He cleared his throat, somewhat guiltily. This was going to cause problems with their meager income, problems that they didn't need.

"I'm so sorry, child, but I don't know what to do – "

Rei turned on her heel, the frown softening instantly. She knelt before him, putting her hands in his lap like a little girl.

"You don't have to do anything, Grandfather. Just – just don't go to work today. Take the day off, visit the Onos or something. I don't want you to get sick again. Listen, I'll take care of it."

"But – "

"No buts. I'll talk to this new doctor. Don't worry. Just putter around uselessly like you always do," Rei scolded, not meaning a word of it. "We can go without your working one day, don't you think?"

She stood briskly, brooking no argument, and began to put her shoes on.

Grandfather half-smiled at her businesslike manner, still worried. "I suppose you're right. But I can't stop working forever just because of this. How else will we buy the ranch back?"

Rei paused, one shoe still unbuckled. Her black hair curtained her face, thankfully obscuring her pained expression. "I know, Grandfather. Don't worry. We'll get enough money up somehow to go home."

"I know we will, child," his voice was warm with certainty.

"I'll see you tonight," she kept her tone neutral, refusing to betray her doubts to the old man.

Practiced fingers twisted her mane into some semblance of order, pinning it into a heavy coil at the base of her neck as Rei nudged open the flimsy, taped-up door and surveyed the barracks around her.

There was a thirst already in her throat, and she could just smell the glassy, seething heat coming in over the infinite dunes beyond Manzanar.

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"Our staff at Manzanar is widely respected…for their efficiency…their professionalism…their compassion," Phyllis explained breathlessly, her words punctuated by short gasps as she struggled to keep up with the doctor's long, purposeful stride. "We're one…of the largest camps…have a reputation…to uphold…for finer living…for the Japanese…"

"I see."

"And here…we've got the elementary school block – school's out now…it's late, of course," Phyllis tittered, glancing hopefully at the doctor in her peripheral vision. It was a shame she couldn't see what color his eyes were behind those sunglasses – the dark frames gave him the look of a rakish film star. He didn't seem to notice her sincere effort at charm, taking in the scenery around him with an air of nonchalance, like he'd been interested until he realized he'd seen it all before. "And this," she continued, louder than before, "this is the community center – they all get together…for their holidays here. Not that many anymore…I guess. The ones left are a…pretty small bunch, I've got to say, which is good because you're our…best doc at the moment, and staff is short – "

"Where, Phyllis," Dr. Jacen Amos interrupted her easily, "– is that your name? it's lovely – where are the hospital barracks?"

Phyllis shivered slightly at the sound of his caressing tenor, Mid-Atlantic roots clear in his enunciation. "J – just nearby, Doctor, in the northeast corner of the central camp. Actually right by your quarters, but I wanted to take you on a tour of the camp first – " she extended her hand, gesturing to the barracks behind him.

"That's kind of you, but not necessary. I'll just explore on my own – thanks for showing me around all the same. Pleasure meeting you, sweetheart," Jacen continued onward, gait long and loose. Phyllis's hand remained suspended in the air as she watched the afternoon sun tenderly burnish the doctor's curls a fiery gold. It was several moments before she realized that she had been rather charmingly kicked to the curb.

Jacen left the tiresome, albeit pretty nurse behind, his blue gaze scanning the wide expanse of desert-aged buildings, absorbing the new information with the eagerness of a long-time student. Despite all that he'd heard about Manzanar being the most dynamic internment facility of them all, he couldn't see how this place was any more livable than some of the run-down, evacuated towns he'd seen overseas. _Take away the little park I just walked past, piped-in water in a shallow pond, fake trees and shrubs blooming out of this dry desert. Take away the silent basketball courts, still smelling of white paint. Take away the empty theaters over here in the center. It's all the same – dusty buildings and resigned faces. That's all the talk is – bullshit._

He slowed as he approached the very center of the camp. Everything was the same. The neat, orderly rows of barracks, fading white paint denoting room numbers and names. Children's Village, Barbershop, Judo Room. Cracked stone steps leading up to each building, wind and sand clouding up just above the bone-dry earth. The center of the camp was pretty empty around this time of day – Jacen guessed that most people were napping at home, too exhausted to do much of anything in the midday heat. He rolled up his thin sleeves with a muttered curse, wishing he'd brought along something to wet his parched mouth.

A few older men lounged on the shaded steps, all clad in ripped overalls, staring past him with cold nonchalance. Two tiny girls, not more than a few years old, clapped their hands together outside the beauty parlor, chattering animatedly in Japanese. Jacen half-smiled as their appropriately tiny mother emerged from the salon, scolding them loudly for – what? – he had no idea. The woman chose that moment to look up, her eyes lighting with surprise on Jacen's tall form – the only American to be seen in the area. She gave him an appraising stare, as they all did, looking for some hidden characteristic that Jacen didn't know if he possessed. Then, as if on cue, they all turned back to their business, the men pulling out cigarettes and matchboxes, the mother vanishing within the parlor's cooler recesses. _I suppose I'll never quite understand._ The soft sound of feminine laughter shattered the still afternoon, and Jacen paused, turning to find the source.

Two schoolgirls, just outside the elementary school block, their dark heads both bent over some mysterious problem. Obviously, neither of them could be bothered to stare at the newcomer. The taller of the two lifted her face to the sun for a brief moment, eyes rolled heavenward with annoyance, and Jacen corrected his previous assessment. _Make that one schoolgirl. This one's probably her teacher – nah, tutor._

He'd known many beauties back in New York, whores and heiresses both, and whoever this girl was, she didn't hold a candle to some of them. All the same, she was striking in a way most women weren't, Japanese or otherwise, her skin almost translucent, sunlight glinting off the glossy coalblack of her hair, reflecting the sparkling cement. A bit too skinny for Jacen's taste. On the short side, too.

_Talk about hard-up_, he laughed at himself. _Looking for pretty girls here of all places?_

It was no good, anyway. In the few short days since his arrival, he'd already noticed that many people still living here – young and old – had an almost corpse-like quality, dried up and desiccated in the sand and sun. Their bones moved like old lace and their unlit eyes filmed over with regret. Still, there was something about the girl that made him want to keep looking… Jacen moved on.

Time to see if Manzanar's hospital facilities were as spacious as glowingly reported. It would be his office as medical department head until the camp inevitably closed down.

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	2. Lil' More Conversation

Just some quick facts: during World War II, many hundred thousand Japanese and Japanese-Americans in the United States, suspected of being spies for Japan, were rounded up and sent to relocation camps throughout the country. These barracks were inhospitable and crowded, with poor medical and culinary facilities. Manzanar, in eastern California, was one of the largest of these camps. The camp closed November 1945, but many had great difficulty even leaving at all, because their homes and possessions had been resold for such a low price that they did not have enough resources to live anywhere else.

Sailormoon is not mine.

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**Twilight Bastille: Chapter #2 – Lil' More Conversation**

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Almost two-o'-clock. Most of the children were already packed up, eyes glazed over with boredom during the last five minutes of class before they could leave. The moment the clock struck the hour, they flooded outdoors, chattering excitedly. The teacher up front shoved a few papers and folders into his bag and left immediately, the wood door slamming shut behind him. He was a brusque man who had barely spoken three words to Rei since she had become the cleaner and assistant tutor, of sorts. The last of the stragglers filed out as Rei absentmindedly pushed in chairs and straightened desks. She hadn't been able to concentrate on work all morning.

If Grandfather couldn't get his medicine, he couldn't work. His job as the bathroom custodian and her work as a classroom assistant paid meagerly enough as it was. She had no idea how they would pool enough money to buy back any property in the West, let alone the valley ranch Grandfather was so attached to. _Free to go since January,_ she thought bitterly, _but with no money to live anywhere else but here._ She thought jealously of the internees wealthy enough to pick up and leave, to move into new homes as soon as they'd been freed last winter. Five years ago, Rei wouldn't have considered herself poor in the least, but the declaration of war had promptly cut off her despised source of income – _Papa_.

She wished, not for the first time, that her father had never sent them here. But it was far too late for that bright spark of anger anymore. Patience and resignation to life here was a lesson hard-learned for Rei, but a lesson learned nonetheless.

Still, it would crush Grandfather to be caged here for God-knew-how-long, unable to return to the ranch, and Rei knew just how fragile his health was already. In the many, many months since they'd been sent here, she'd seen him grow weaker and weaker, dependent on medications that were hard to come by anywhere, let alone at Manzanar. Usually a perceptive person, quick to know things before they happened, Rei knew that she had trusted for too long that her only real family would be healthy forever. It was a childish belief, but he was all she had. Rei would never let him go.

He was everything.

_I really need to take care of him now._

"Excuse me? Miss Rei?"

Wrenched from her thoughts, Rei turned to the door, open just a crack to let the girlish voice through. "What is it, Hotaru?"

The girl opened the door just a bit further, poking her heart-shaped face in. Stepping into the classroom, Hotaru smiled at her shyly and began to speak rapidly in Japanese. "Miss Rei…I'm sorry to bother you again, but I didn't understand this algebra question when Mr. Yukimura explained it. Can you help me?"

Rei smiled at the younger girl. "There's no need for you to be so formal. Don't be afraid to ask."

They both stepped outside, where the light was better, and pulled up seats at the mess table just past the building. Hotaru quickly pulled her oft-patched schoolbag off her shoulder, searching for her algebra notes. Rei watched the girl, losing herself in distant thought, as was her incurable habit.

When she was younger, she'd spent a great deal of time searching through Grandfather's old photographs of her laughing, fairy-winged mother who was gone, swept away by some uncertain illness before Rei could even snatch a memory of her. Nevertheless, her recollections were too vague to cause her any real pain. There was something about Hotaru that reminded Rei of those precious photographs; she seemed like a firefly, radiant as she was delicate. The oldest orphan in Block 28, Hotaru was one of Rei's favorite people in the camp – there weren't as many left, with people moving back into homes their neighbors had kept for them.

"Here it is – this is the problem I was having trouble with," Hotaru pulled a bent notebook out. Rei took it from her, flipping to the last written page and quickly scanning what was diagrammed there. "Oh, I see. Conic sections – I remember this from school, fortunately…" She took Hotaru's pencil, making quick sketches on the blank page opposite.

"I still don't get this part," Hotaru said, puzzled, a good fifteen minutes later. "Why is it reversed?"

Rei rolled her eyes heavenward. "Hotaru, I just said, it's negative – "

"Look," Hotaru interrupted her quietly, her attention elsewhere. "He's watching you."

Rei followed Hotaru's pointed gaze, only to see a man's turned back, walking away from them. Certainly not Japanese, judging by his blond head and height. "He's not watching me."

"He was." Hotaru affirmed, twirling a silky black lock around her finger carelessly.

"Who is he?"

"I'm not sure. The new supervising doctor, I guess, because he's walking toward the hospital."

Rei's eyes narrowed slightly, the color of dark wine. "So that's him, is it?"

"I think so – Miss Rei, you look upset…"

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After Hotaru left, Rei finished mopping up the various classrooms by dusk. Pausing on the doorstep, she glanced at the dun-colored horizon; twilight here was always dimmed by faraway dust storms. She had to hurry if she was going to catch the doctor still in the hospital.

"Hey there, Miss Tokyo Rose, too busy tonight for a lonely guy?"

Raucous laughter shattered the silence, as the night guard's buddies slapped him on the back. He gave her a slow, easy grin. Rei, hackles rising, forced herself to walk past, only pausing to deliver a positively withering stare. He stepped back acquiescingly, but his eyes still followed her footsteps.

_If I didn't have to worry about the consequences for Grandfather…I'd never let them get off so easy_, she thought darkly. The rowdy guards had nothing better to do; there hadn't been a peep of unrest at Manzanar for months now.

The lights in the hospital windows were dim; Rei saw no movement behind the desks. Closed. _No problem; I'll just make a personal visit. _The doctors and other senior administrative staff enjoyed spacious quarters around the back._ Time to make my…request?_

Request was not exactly the word she had in mind.

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Jacen tossed his last white shirt into the armoire, along with the abused leather duffel it had been crumpled into. It hadn't taken him much time to unpack – _I never saw the point in too much folding, anyway,_ he thought ruefully. He could have finished this morning, had Phyllis not arrived to take him on her little tour. _I can't believe she traipsed me all over camp before telling me the hospital was right next to my room._

He couldn't complain much beyond that, though. His quarters were spacious and airy, with several windows allowing the sunset to spatter over the wood-paneled floor. A comfortably large bed (although Jacen didn't see much opportunity for an additional occupant), trestle desk, matching armoire, and a deep recliner completed the room's major furnishings. A few other things had been added, probably by a feminine hand – a rug, a bright lamp, nightstand, and a few extra pillows on the bed – _maybe a hint from Phyllis,_ Jacen thought with a snort.

The phone on his desk rang suddenly.

"Hello?" Jacen picked up the phone at the second ring.

"Jacen? Is this Jacen Amos?" her low, questioning voice came through loud and clear.

_Good Lord. _Jacen dropped into the chair, one hand coming up to rub at his forehead. "It's me, Therese. How the hell did you find my number so quickly?"

Therese laughed throatily. "I've got my sources. I did a little digging, found out you were out of convalescence. Your camp manager, or whatever – just so you know, he thinks I'm your wife."

"I'm fairly certain that's just wishful thinking on your part, Therese," Jacen replied lightly, refusing to acknowledge the purr in her voice.

"Aren't you nasty tonight! And here I thought we'd been friends so long that you'd be the one to call me up first when you were better!"

"Therese." His voice went cold. "We're not friends, and as a little bird told me you're now engaged, we're not anything else, either. Don't call this number again."

"What the hell are you doing out there, Jacen?" Therese's voice was shrill, tinny over the phone. "Everyone wants to know where you've gone!"

"Anyone curious enough about my whereabouts can find me – you can attest to that. I'm not hiding from anyone."

"I thought you'd come back to New York when you got better," she said. "I thought we…"

"You thought wrong. Don't hand out my phone number like you do your other favors, Therese," Jacen added as an afterthought. "I don't want a million phone calls. I'm working out here in California; it's no vacation."

"I'll do my best to forget your number, Jacen, don't you worry," she snarled, and the line went dead. He hung up with a sigh.

The last of his flings before he'd gone abroad, Therese had admittedly been a little different. After all, they'd known each other since childhood, making flirtation impossible between them. She'd gone for blunt honesty instead, telling Jacen exactly what she wanted from him, and the relationship had been a refreshingly simple one. Until she'd tried to put the marital noose over his head…he shouldn't have been surprised, and yet he still was. _Thank God she's another man's problem now._

There was a sharp rap at his door. He hadn't been expecting company. Jacen crossed the room, not particularly caring that his unknown guest would be privy to its total disarray. He flung the door open. _Surprise, surprise._

The girl he'd seen teaching earlier, standing on his doorstep, her violet eyes snapping flame at him. He'd never seen eyes quite like hers; it unbalanced him for just a moment.

Jacen glanced pointedly at the growing darkness outside, asking, "Can I help you, kid?"

Taking her forbidding look into stride, his silverblue eyes remained calmly on hers.

"It's Rei Hino, actually. I'd like to place an order for some pills." She held a small order form up for his inspection. He took it, skimming over the precise, elegant cursive.

"Well." The tiniest of smirks curved Jacen's mouth, and he briefly scanned her lithe form, top to bottom, before replying. "You're on the younger side for a prescription like this, aren't you?"

Rei expression remained cold. "It's for my grandfather, _Doctor,_" she spoke the last as if it was something vile. "Whom I believe you turned down cold, just this morning."

"Oh, yes, I remember," and Jacen did, with some regret. He'd genuinely wanted to help the elderly man, but there was no way to secure his medication through official channels. Internment camps were possibly the lowest ranked in the pecking order, when it came to food and medication. Jacen tried to think of a way to explain – the girl seemed reasonable, if haughty. She had not been raised here, that much he could tell. Jacen detected a Japanese accent, but it was considerably faded, more of a lilt. "Listen, come inside and I'll explain how it works."

Rei didn't hesitate the way he expected most girls of her age and upbringing would, stepping inside the large room as though she owned it. His view was much improved by the lamplight, and Jacen couldn't help but admire her striking features, her lips and crushed-velvet eyes the only color in her elegant face. _I bet she'll make her husband happy, some years from now._

Jacen reseated himself by his desk. She continued to stand, not even glancing at the recliner. Guessing that Rei wouldn't sit, even if he asked, Jacen began.

"I'm not sure you understand the situation, and it's no wonder, because the system is a confusing one, and internees have access to precious little information. What I told your grandpa is true. There's no way I can order his medication through the official channels. There's a lot of jargon to it, but basically, rationing regulations are being changed every day, and with the situation overseas being what it has been for the last year, the kind of medication your grandpa needs is very hard to get a hold of right now."

"I already know all that," Rei replied composedly. "But without those pills, my grandfather can't work. And without his wages, we don't have a hope in hell of moving out of this place. Every day he wakes up here, his health worsens. And really, that's all I care about – getting him out. So if there's any way for me to get those pills for him… I'll damn well take it."

_So she's got a mouth on her_, Jacen thought. _She's nothing like sweet old grandpa._ He admired her pluck, but really, he didn't enjoy repeating himself.

The doctor shrugged and leaned back in the chair. "I admire your determination, but honestly, it doesn't matter if your grandpa's Churchill himself. There's no way anybody here is going to waste their time and money to help out the one guy who can't – "

" – can't what?" she interrupted sharply. Jacen could see her losing her cool, anger bubbling up beneath the cool veneer. With two steps Rei was right in front of him, her smell of flowers and smoke invading his space. He had to give her credit – that glare was more than a little cowing. Jacen stood slowly, not about to let the girl think she could intimidate him.

Rei generally tried not to let her temper get the best of her, but she wasn't about to let someone who'd met her grandfather once tell her what he was capable of. The worry, the stress, the frustration of depending on someone else for his continued health was wearing her down. She managed to keep her voice down, but the words were sibilant, unexpectedly lethal. "Can't hack it? Is that what you were going to say? So what exactly _are_ you here for, if you're not even going to treat anybody? Is a case like my grandfather's too hard for you? What the hell kind of doctor – "

"That's enough." Startled by his brusque command, so apart from the relaxed demeanor she'd become accustomed to throughout their little interview, Rei stopped. Jacen moved forward, toward her, and she moved back to avoid being practically stepped on. Her back hit the door with a thud, and Rei wondered briefly if the room had shrunk. She wasn't sure what part of her beginning tirade had hit home, but the glint in his eyes held real menace. The doctor's voice, though, was still controlled, if tight.

"Listen, kid. I don't know what standards you're judging my skills by, but I can assure you that I have no intention of sitting here and letting a brat like you mouth off about something you obviously don't understand. There's nothing I can do for your situation, so I advise you find somebody else to irritate."

Rei felt distinctly unsteady at his proximity, too startled to be angry anymore, and it made her reckless. When she spoke, her words were unrepentant. "Hit a nerve, did I?"

Jacen had no idea how he'd ended up here, holding this girl up against a door like she was some kind of felon. He was blessed with a remarkably even temper, and he couldn't remember ever losing his cool with a woman, certainly never getting physical. Somehow, what she'd said was so goddamn provoking…Jacen didn't quite trust himself to speak civilly yet; his words were rough.

"Get out. I'm running some errands. If I come back and find you still hanging around…" He shook his head. "Just get out." Jacen brushed past her, banging open the door and disappearing into the dark.

After a moment, she also exited, making her way around the large building. His dizzyingly rapid change of mood left her equally curious and afraid. Rei smiled slightly. What was she so scared of anyway? No one had ever intimidated her before; malicious schoolgirls and lecherous night guards alike were thrown by her disconcerting, lingering stare and unexpectedly indelicate vocabulary (a surprising perquisite of dealing with her wealthy classmates' bullying). It seemed the man she'd met tonight was a force to be reckoned with. Rei knew she'd been rude – she was a little surprised at herself, to tell the truth – she'd only meant to discomfit the new doctor a bit, and she certainly hadn't intended to let things get so confrontational. After her years here, she thought she had a pretty good idea of how to get people to do her bidding without needing to fight. But what interested Rei more was that he hadn't shouted at her despite his sudden, obvious rage. From that clue alone, she suspected he was not one to lose control of his own emotions easily, and it made her wonder what had set him off enough to even reveal his anger to her at all. It was…curious.

Her smile slipped as she thought of her grandfather. So the decision was final. What would they do without his medicines? Some days, those pills were the only thing that kept the pain at bay long enough for him to do his work. Rei stopped short, sinking to the dirt, her back against the wall. Without the money he made, they would never be able to re-buy their home. _Oh, God…to be trapped here forever,_ surrounded by prisoners like her and still more alone than she'd ever been in her life.

There was nobody around now, and the night was mercifully black. All the same, Rei couldn't find it in herself to weep.

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	3. Depth of Field

Sailormoon is not mine.

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**Twilight Bastille: Chapter #3 – Depth of Field**

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The night air was hazily warm, swirls of dust rising as Jacen's feet hit the ground. His thoughts racing, he walked quickly, unsure of where he was going or what he was leaving behind. _I could call in a favor…Phil would send the meds over, no problem. Or what about Ben – I wonder if he's still with OSG?_

Reaching the outskirts of the camp, he slumped against the high fence. He could see the shadows of the night watchmen atop the towers, standing silent guard over the gates. The stark moonlight threw their guns into sharp relief. Why was he even considering sending for the pills? It could get him into some trouble, he knew. And they were expensive all by themselves, without the bribe.

Jacen rolled his eyes at the errant thought. Really, when had money ever been an issue for him? He certainly didn't work here for the dough. What was he thinking? Why did this matter so much to him, anyway?

It had taken Jacen one look at the old man to know that he would probably never leave Manzanar. His will to live was certainly not lacking, but his ancient body would never withstand the searing heat and choking dust of another summer. The girl's grandfather spoke very little English, but that did nothing to diminish his clearly talkative nature. Jacen rather enviously sensed a wealth of stories begging to be told to great-grandchildren in his cracked voice, a gentleness in his lined hands, a ready smile in the many folds of his face. Jacen wished that memories of his own stone-faced grandfather evoked such instant warmth.

And the granddaughter? _Little shrew…_well, she'd been all priss until provoked. Her seething skepticism of his abilities had gotten under his skin in a way he didn't expect. _I've never seen that kind of temper in any of these Japanese girls. She acted like she didn't give a damn what she had to do or say, just as long as she got what she wanted. And hasn't she? You're even seriously thinking about doing this now. What makes her little balls-out act so persuasive?_

He knew he'd just hit upon the answer. It had been no act – beneath the cool veneer, Rei Hino was all fire. In truth, Jacen found that he remembered nothing about her so much as the aura of _life_, as tangible as the curve of her mouth and the soot of her eyelashes. She blossomed from the withered landscape surrounding her. _Watch it, Doc, she's just a girl. A girl with a too-big mouth,_ he thought, half-amused, half-irritated that he was still thinking about this – her.

It had always been something of an obsession of his, proving people wrong. Jacen knew he didn't look like a serious physician, that his smile came too easily and too often. Who would take seriously the twenty-nine-year-old son of Manhattan royalty, fresh off his prestigious neurology residency and better known for enjoying women's beds than examining anyone in them? Jacen let the malicious rumors slide, preferring that his competence speak for itself. It did.

That had been a year ago, before a tour of duty he'd spent overseas as an Air Force captain, caring for the sky's wounded and dying. In the war, Jacen learned quickly just how little his residency had really taught him. His knowledge was useless in the face of the injuries he triaged every day, from minor concussions to horrific traumas. It was funny, really, how men fighting there somehow maintained a certain spark, a gritty will…and how men imprisoned here maintained nothing but apathetic sufferance in their collective fate. Confinement did terrible things to people.

It was the first thing he noticed when he arrived at Manzanar, how the distinction between men and walking corpses blurred. Some wished to die, and their leathery skins would not let them. Others in seemingly good health passed away, simply exhausted of their mortal cage. Jacen had talked it over with the former chief, Dr. Phifer, who had expressed a certain nonchalance. "It's hard to care, son, when your patients don't."

Was it really? He knew of at least one man who wanted to live, and badly.

Jacen turned to walk back to his barracks, turning the other doctor's words over in his head.

…

Rei was undressing behind the curtain when a sharp rap at the door sounded. Startled, she threw on her thin robe and headed for the entrance, not wanting her grandfather to be disturbed. It had been two weeks since he lost access to his pills, and she didn't want him moving around any more than necessary. It was probably just Hotaru anyway; nobody but Rei's studious tutee would drop by this late.

"Rei? Who is it?" her grandfather's voice drifted from the back.

"Just a minute, Grandfather, it's – " Rei opened the door and found herself face to face with Dr. Jacen Amos – or rather, face to chest. She lifted her chin. " – you."

He raised a blond eyebrow at her disheveled appearance, but refrained from commenting. Jacen wasn't sure what to say to her as of their argument two weeks ago, but he thought it best to start by playing nice.

"May I come in?"

Rei opened her mouth to reply just as Grandfather bustled in with a tray of cookies, glasses of water, and oddly, fancy wineglasses they never used – they didn't even drink. She closed her mouth abruptly; Grandfather was clearly trying to impress the doctor.

"Sit, sit, Dr. Amos," Grandfather smiled warmly at Jacen. "You…need something?"

Jacen returned the smile, genuinely. He brushed past her, not stealing the opportunity to touch her like some of the staff Rei knew would have. "Actually, I've just come to drop this parcel off for you, sir. I made a special request of a friend in higher places…I think you'll be pleased with the contents."

There was a confused pause before Grandfather's eyes widened, a disbelieving smile brightening his face.

"Th-thank you, Dr. Amos. Rei and I…thank you. Well, then… Sit, sit! You must have something to eat. No, no, no, sit!"

Smiling at the old man's insistence, Jacen sat in one of their plastic chairs, helping to plate the snacks and conversing easily with Grandfather despite his slightly broken English. Forgotten for the moment, Rei retreated into the lengthening shadows, watching them through slitted violet eyes.

…

_I don't understand. Is he still angry with me? Was he ever really angry at all, or was he trying to frighten me so I'd mind my own business? Why did he send for the medicines even though he said it was almost impossible? What must he think of me?_

Rei had to admit that there was something to the doctor's style – his actions backed up that cocky attitude. He didn't bother with flimsy promises, he delivered. And quickly, too – she wondered who Jacen had to know, to have the pills in his hands within two weeks. _Like I thought when I met him,_ Rei recalled. _There's something more to this man._ Throughout the mental barrage of questions, Rei was aware of an unfamiliar heat spreading under her skin as she studied the doctor's face.

His patrician features were shadowed in the dim room, and they looked almost hewn from marble. The only softness in his face was his mouth, bow-shaped and accustomed to a perpetual smirk. She wondered what secret amusement made him smile like that, always.

Jacen often ran a hand through his shaggy blond mane, a motion that reminded Rei of a lion's easy grace. He was a tall man, filling the tiny room – and she remembered from that day two weeks ago, rather dwarfing Rei herself. But his muscle wasn't what had intimidated her. It had been the fury in those eyes. _Too much pain there to be just a man's injured pride._

…

"What are you thinking of, Rei?"

The sound of her name felt too intimate in his husky intonation. He'd never said it before, seeming to prefer "kid" to other appellations.

"I noticed you watching us tonight, from your corner," Jacen said quietly. _Not us. Me. What are you seeing in me, Rei?_

The doctor stood just before her, forced to press close in the narrow space leading to the wash basin. In his hands was the tray, stacked with empty glasses and plates. Glancing over at her grandfather, she saw that he was soundly asleep, his mouth still moving slightly as though he was speaking. He'd been exhausted all day, despite resting, the unbearable desert heat lulling him to sleep. God, how she worried about him these days…

Rei turned her attention back to the man before her, his gaze colliding with hers. He seemed a different man from the carefree joker, the practiced flirt, the furious bully she'd met two weeks ago. The doctor's hard angles seemed subdued in the lamplight, quiet interest evident in his eyes_._ He changed personas like quicksilver, shimmering first one way, then another. She could have scorned Jacen's jokes and innuendoes, made light of his anger, but this...

She wished she'd put her hair up decently before answering the door, or at least donned something more substantial; what Rei wore was more appropriate for a husband's view than a guest's, and she felt naked under those flame-blue eyes. Even so, her flimsy robe now felt too warm, and she shifted slightly, feeling the wall press into her back. The hot, static air between them felt electrified, sparking fine tremors in her limbs.

No man had ever looked through her like this, like he saw an answering flame dancing just beneath her skin.

"Thank you. For everything you've done," Rei spoke softly, not wanting her words to sound rehearsed. She didn't know what else to say to him. A droplet of sweat meandered down the line of her jaw, and she somehow knew he followed its path.

"You're welcome." Jacen didn't miss a beat, for all that the last thing he was thinking of was prescriptions and pills. Rei didn't look the part of a girl, standing here in the shadows, woman's knowledge in her eyes compelling him in a way he hadn't expected.

Rei reached slowly for the tray, not even thinking. "Here, I…"

Her cool fingertips brushed against his, and they both started at the brief contact, jumping apart as though the slender thread dragging them together had snapped. An unused wineglass on the edge of the tray teetered and crashed to the wood floor. Rei dropped with it, breathing as though she'd been running, hiding her face behind the inky curtain of her hair. Her eyes fixed on the ground, she slowly began to pick up the pieces, ignoring the pricking nerve endings in her fingertips as she touched the sharp glass. The noise of the crash reverberated in Rei's ears, and his footsteps sounded that much more quietly as he walked past her and out the door.

Only when Rei was sure he was gone did she lift her face. Her hands stilled on the shattered fragments, and she abruptly sank backward, hugging her knees as she contemplated the wall in front of her.

…

Once out the door, Jacen fought the urge to break into a dead run. _What the hell are you doing?_ he asked himself furiously. _One minute you're just trying to squeeze past the girl, the next you're about to take her and…_In truth, Jacen had no idea how it had happened. He couldn't recall his exact thoughts as they'd stood there together, but he could remember the cadence of her slow, soft breaths, the lamplight on her cheek.

He hadn't expected to want her_._ By the time he'd become conscious of his desire, it had already grown strong enough for him to do something regrettable – _thank God for fragile stemware._ Jacen snorted._ This probably didn't happen two weeks ago because we were too busy yelling at each other to notice the tension._ And the tension was mutual, he was sure of that. Jacen had seen that sudden unashamed curiosity leap in her eyes, felt the responding rush of blood below.

_So do something about it. What you always do._

_No._

And the internal argument began.

Sure, this wasn't New York, and nobody familiar was here to gossip about his indiscretions, of which he had too many back home…but…did it matter that nobody was watching? _Wasn't that why you came here? To get away from that life?_ Jacen swallowed, hard. Some ghosts would never forsake him, no matter how far he ran. Some ghosts he never wanted to leave behind. Nonetheless, Jacen owed it to himself to prove that he could be professional about this. _Jesus, asshole, is it really such a big deal to just keep it in your pants this once?_

The scent of that black curtain of hair, swishing around him as she sank to the floor…

_Shit._

_This isn't about the girl,_ Jacen lectured himself._ It's about her grandpa._ Though…he'd seen the look Rei had given her sleeping grandfather. There was nothing to describe it. He'd never seen such love in a woman's eyes, fierce and bordering on desperation, not for anyone.

If her grandfather broke, he suspected, so did she.

Jacen had just made his final decision on sainthood when w_ouldn't you want her to look at you like that?_ the itinerant musing skittered across his thoughts.

He did not sleep well that night.

…

Rei sat in the hallway for some time, cupping the leftover feeling of his presence in her mind, turning it over and over and examining it.

She hadn't been surprised, exactly, when his gaze on her turned less professional, more predatory. Rei knew she was no raving beauty, but only a blind man could say she was not striking. _Grandfather always says my eyes are my great fault – too dark, too watchful. Too hard, he says, for real loveliness._ What _had_ surprised Rei was her own reaction to the doctor. What exactly had transpired between them didn't matter; she remembered very clearly her unfamiliar longing, her unfulfilled need. _Need. _Just the word made her uncomfortable.

_What is it about him? Men like him have always betrayed you. Papa could be charming too, when he wanted – he swept women off their feet and forgot about them. God knows, he probably still does…but I am no fool. I won't accept the things my mother accepted, took for granted._

"Child?"

Rei looked up. "Oh, Grandfather, you're awake…"

He stood over her, leaning against the wall. She noticed with alarm how loosely his skin hung over his frame, how labored his breathing sounded. Leaping up to steady him, Rei pulled his arm around her waist.

"I'll help you to your room."

Grandfather laughed softly. "I didn't mean to startle you. Where are my manners, little one? First, I fall asleep talking to Dr. Amos…" his expression grew worried. "Where is he? I didn't even properly thank him for specially ordering the medicines…what will he think of us?"

Rei shook her head. "He left some time ago, Grandfather. Don't worry. He understood that you were tired."

"Tired? Tired from what? I've done nothing but stare at my ugly old toes all day," he sighed. "With my pills, I'll be able to get back to work."

"Pfft." Rei all but shoved the old man into his bed. "Work, my foot. You stay – " she indicated his cot, away from the sometimes drafty windows " – here. For now, at least."

He looked around at the mess of pillows in disgust. "Here? Without any windows? How will I be able to see the delightful Izuko walk to the mess hall in the mornings? Or Kasumi at noon? Or – "

"Grandfather!" Rei cried in mock outrage, laughing. She threw another pillow at his head. "I guess your ladykilling ways will never quit, am I right?"

"My years of youth are hardly behind me," he grinned back. "Your grandmother would have agreed, if she were with us now." His tone sobered, as it always did when he spoke of his long-gone wife.

"Tell me again about her, and my mother," Rei said quietly.

"The blood of the samurai caste ran through her veins, and through yours too. When your mother was born so small, so delicate…"

Rei sat beside him on the thin mattress, listening more to the familiar cadence of his speech than to the wistful story she'd heard many times. Ten minutes later, he was fast asleep.

She kissed the top of his head, as she had grown accustomed to doing ever since she shot above him in height, and dimmed the lamps. As Rei padded out of the room, softly pulling the curtain shut behind her, Grandfather opened his eyes and stared into the darkness, able to make out the faint outline of his granddaughter by the basin, patiently scrubbing down their dishes. She wouldn't sleep for another hour or so, patching up their threadbare clothing. The lamps in the washroom dimmed as well, and he watched Rei's form coalesce with the night.

_Child, who will love you when I am gone?_

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	4. Freefall

Sailormoon, still not mine.

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**Twilight Bastille: Chapter #4 – Freefall**

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_Rei could never catch her father. She always fell first, her bathwater-wet hair slipping into the mud. The black door of the limousine always shut moments before she reached it, and she was left alone in the dirt._

_The girl turned to her grandfather, searching instinctively for his comforting smell of cedar and cotton, for his gentle hands…_

_He was not there._

…

Rei awoke instantly, a scream only half-choked rising in her throat. _Calm down! It's only a nightmare, nothing more. Don't be such a child!_ she urged herself, trying desperately to quell her fluttering heartbeat. She rose, splashed her face with water from the basin, noting that it was nearly empty. _I'll have to refill it at the latrine_.

Rei glanced around the room, trying to see it as a stranger might. Until the doctor's visit last night, she'd never given thought to how their building appeared to others. Looking around at the state of their barracks also distracted Rei from her strange encounter with the doctor last night, something she didn't want to probe too closely.

At first, they'd occupied the barracks with another family. The Furukatas, a family of three children, their mother, and their aunt, had filled up the greater part of the building. There had never been enough water, and the bathroom had stunk all day. Rei could still remember the deathly shrieks of the baby, every time Mrs. Furukata threatened it with soapy bathwater.

That family had left months ago, striking out to Wyoming where the land was cheap. Pragmatic people. The Furukatas didn't cherish the same hope that Grandfather did – that there was a chance of buying their old home in California back.

Their barracks consisted of a living room (split in half by a curtain to denote Rei's bedroom), and an area in the back that Rei had recently converted into a more comfortable space for Grandfather. Three basins – two for their personal use, the last for dishes. All in all, it was about a tenth of the size of their valley home. Gritty floors, splintering wood walls, and scattered relics from home everywhere. The miniature shrine in the back, where Grandfather prayed every morning. Cracked flowerpots from the valley, overflowing with fuchsia geraniums. A shrine maiden's garments, too small but meticulously spotless.

_Probably more than any other house in this camp, ours speaks of transience. The furniture is plastic, foldaway. We don't dare buy new clothes just in case that extra dollar can buy our home back. Grandfather decided the minute he arrived here that he would survive to see his ranch again. I…I always resented Papa's money that bought that place…but Grandfather fell in love with it._

Bright sunlight shone through the cracks between the wood planks of the building, dappling the dark room with lines of blinding white. Dust flowed through those cracks as well, covering the floor, making it impossible for her to walk barefoot as she liked.

Bending to pick up the sheets she'd kicked to the floor, Rei halted.

Something wasn't right.

The curtain flapped idly in the slightest breeze, rustling plastic and patchwork cotton.

Other than that, there was no noise in the house. No sound of the broom sweeping over the floor, no cheery "Up, up, child, it's far past dawn!"

More than that, Rei _felt_ the lack of his presence. She could sense it, somewhere in the painful clench of her chest, the sudden acidic taste in her dry mouth. She stepped into what they jokingly referred to as the "parlor", where Jacen had sat last night. Her worry growing, Rei still couldn't help but notice that his musky scent lingered in the motionless air.

Two glasses stood innocuously upon the table. One chipped glass was full, the liquid inside tepid. The other was empty.

"Grandfather?"

No answer. Rei hadn't expected one. She was already pulling on her shoes and tying the waist sash of her housedress. In seconds, Rei was out the door, her long black mane a banner behind her.

…

Grandfather scrubbed the sweat off his brow with one leathered hand. _One more bathroom to go, and I'll be done for the day._ It was well into the morning hours; hopefully Rei wasn't up. He had to get back before she awoke. She'd be furious if she knew he was still working, and rightly so.

_It's not that I don't know I'm ill,_ Grandfather reflected bitterly. _But what else can I do? I can't bear to be idle and leave her all the work. I can't afford to lose my salary, lose my home forever. Unless we've made enough money to return to the valley…when this camp closes, they'll turn us out onto the streets._

_My child deserves better._

And it was true. Rei was more his than anybody else's, and he would always protect her. Ever since she'd fallen in the dirt at her father's leaving and stared up at him with her hurt-animal eyes – the last time he ever saw such total vulnerability on her face – they'd belonged wholly to each other.

He squinted his eyes in the already-bright sunlight, barely able to see the latrine block he'd be cleaning next. It swerved and sparkled like a mirror in the simmering heat. Salty perspiration dripped unceasingly down his forehead, and he saw nothing but sparks in his vision for a moment, gleaming bits of sand tilting crazily close.

_All this squinting with these ancient eyes_, Grandfather thought ruefully. _It's giving me a miserable headache._

Grandfather made his way up the walkway, steadying himself with one hand on the railing. The black iron balustrade, directly in the sun, burned to the touch. A blinding flash, like brightest camera fire, sparked behind his eyelids. He flung his hand away from the hot metal, his feet lurching beneath him.

…

…_Her small, bare feet pounded down the uneven steps of the old shrine, slipping slightly on the curling tendrils of moss. There was a smell of damp stone and dew-kissed leaves in the air and Rei ran faster than she had ever run in her life, because if she couldn't catch him now, he'd be gone forever._

Her slippered feet skidded over the powdery dirt, trampling prickly weeds in their wake. A scent of melting, metallic sand hung in the air. And Rei was running again.

_How many times have I run like this? Countless. Every night in my dreams. I never wanted it to happen again._

Rei couldn't put a name to her panic, but it was tangible, an intuition clamping tight her ribs, paining her every breath. A portent that she couldn't ignore. Nobody was around now; children were in classes and everybody else was getting ready for breakfast at the mess hall. The guard who had approached her two weeks before whistled a show tune at her from his barracks doorstep, splashing on a cloying aftershave.

She ignored all of it.

There was no sure way of knowing exactly where he was, so Rei ran blindly, trusting her instinct to lead her right. She found herself moving towards the outskirts of the camp, toward the bathrooms furthest from their barracks.

Long before she'd reached the crumpled figure at the base of the railing, she knew.

When she laid her trembling hands upon him, he was little more than a pile of swaddled clothes and slender bones. His pulse quivered hesitantly beneath her fingertips.

Rei heard an anguished, keening moan in the distance. _Shut up! Let me be, let me grieve for my own._ Who was that, making those throbbing animal noises? She buried her face in his chest, her fists gripping his grayed old shirt in handfuls, trying to block out the sound of her pain.

She didn't remember what voice guided her to his door.

…

Jacen was shaving at his mirror when a loud bang at the front door sounded. He cursed fluently as the razor cut into his throat, spilling red over his unbuttoned shirt. Toweling the blood off, he stomped to the door and threw it open, wincing at the morning light flooding his vision. He blinked a few times, and suddenly Rei was in front of him, her head bowed.

_Well, this is unexpected…_

The events of last night slammed back into his memory – her closeness in the hallway, the shattered glass, his resolution to stay back. "'Morning, pigeon." The nickname came easily, without thought. Odd, but appropriate. She put him in mind of a fragile, fascinating bird of some sort, caged and wild.

Rei didn't reply, her hair still curtaining her face. She swayed slightly in the breeze, as though she could barely hold herself upright. Frowning, he reached forward to steady her, tilt her chin up.

"Hey – hey, what is it…?" Jacen trailed off as he leaned in, got a good look at her face.

Something was clearly wrong.

Strands of coal black clung to her skin, caught in a thin sheen of sweat. Her eyes were dully obscure, but no tears fell. Jacen felt a sudden chill down the length of his spine, looking into that blank face. Letting go of her chin, he turned swiftly to grab his emergency bag. He brushed past her, leaving the door open, and broke into a jog, seeing from Rei's quickly-vanishing path of footprints where the old man lay.

Rei followed behind him, moving more deliberately. She placed one foot in front of the other, brow furrowed at the dirt in intense concentration. Her thoughts were silenced, her footsteps even softer. She feared that any noise would reawaken that mental scream.

So she walked quietly, arms rigidly pinned to her sides, and tried to think of nothing at all.

…

"Cerebrovascular accident. Currently comatose."

Jacen shoved the report across the table, massaging his temples with his other hand. The fuss outside his office was noisy, nurses talking in loud, excited voices. They hadn't had any such serious illnesses or injuries in months. Inside, however, it was quiet and cold, just the way they both wanted it. Rei snatched the report, her eyes hungrily scanning the paper for an explanation, for something to blame. He watched her silently mouth the unfamiliar words to herself.

She seemed to be back to normal, her manner composed, her tone businesslike. The tremble of her hands was barely noticeable, her voice only slightly breathless.

Four hours ago, Rei had been all but sleepwalking. She didn't remember following Jacen to where she thought her grandfather lay dead. She didn't remember watching from a few feet away as Jacen gently stretched her grandfather out in the shade, quickly checking for a pulse, feeling the rise and fall of his chest with an experienced hand. There had been a stretcher, a growing crowd of murmuring internees. Jacen had calmly maneuvered her through the spectators, his imposing height clearing a path, and then a jarring cart-ride to the hospital. She didn't remember anything up until half an hour ago, when Jacen had shaken her roughly from her seat, hands gripping her curled-in shoulders, tired blue eyes locked on hers.

"He's alive, Rei."

She had stared at him dumbly, recognition coming slowly. He'd turned away and walked back to his office, wanting to give her a moment to collect herself. While waiting, Jacen had begun to write up the report. When he looked up again, Rei stood in the doorway, that familiar blaze in her eyes. Now she sat across from him, expression hidden behind the report. And all Jacen could do was watch her, praying to everything he considered holy (and that was very little) that he never saw that lifelessness in her face again.

Rei dropped the papers back on his desk, willing her hands not to shake. Attempting to slow her racing thoughts, she glanced around his office, his cluttered working space, so different from the spare desk in his own quarters. The air was cooler in here, thanks to the many lazily whirring fans overhead. The walls were all white, the floors painted to match. Grandfather hated white. Back at their shrine in Tokyo, the walls and floors were all paneled with cedar. He'd lovingly scrubbed the ancient, knotted wood down every morning. Even at the ranch, Grandfather had inched his way up a tottery ladder every few months to touch up the sky blue paint on the walls. He always wanted to feel like he was outside. And now he'd be confined indoors in these antiseptic rooms for God-knew-how-long. She drew a deep breath, unable to think of the prospect without a sort of throbbing pain.

Jacen's gaze was coolly professional, all traces of personal interest banished. He'd seen a hundred daughters and granddaughters try and act like they weren't scared. Rei pulled it off fairly well, but there was no mistaking the difference between the girl who'd walked into his room without shame, the girl who'd enticed him with her woman's eyes…and the far littler girl sitting here before him. She looked on the point of collapse, but she met his eyes all the same.

"How are you feeling?" As he spoke, Jacen pulled a tumbler from his desk cabinet and filled it with whiskey. "Here. This'll settle your nerves." It was a command, but Rei ignored it, leaning forward over the report.

The last thing Rei needed him thinking was that she couldn't deal with this. She didn't have his skills, but she had every intention of helping to pull Grandfather through. It wouldn't do if the doctor thought she couldn't handle the situation – he'd make a point of withholding serious information from her, to spare her nerves. Most doctors made it their policy not to tell female relatives of the patient how bad things really were. _Grandfather will need you to be strong. Like his wife was. Remember whose blood runs through your veins._ She straightened, emotional fatigue ebbing from the tight lines of her face.

"What kind of…treatment…does he need?" She prayed that she sounded somewhat normal.

Jacen flattened his palms over the books and documents spread haphazardly between them, leaning back. He looked completely at home in the leather armchair, every inch a man comfortable in his competence.

"I'm putting him on a pretty standard diet of medication, Rei, – to control blood clotting, sugar, pressure, what have you." Jacen didn't want to complicate things, but he also didn't like treating her like she was stupid. "I'll deal with the rest when he wakes up – hopefully mobility and other functions haven't been affected, but I won't know for sure until he's conscious – "

"Conscious? When will that be?" Rei interrupted, panic edging into her voice. She couldn't help it; she held her breath, waiting for the answer.

Jacen paused. "Honestly? I don't know." She exhaled sharply, though her expression didn't change. Jacen had the impression that it was all but glued to her face, held there by sheer will. "Normally, Rei, I wouldn't be so blunt with a young woman. But…" he shrugged, a small smile lifting the corners of his mouth, "you've made it rather clear to me that you'll do absolutely anything to ensure his welfare. I assume this includes staying on top of changes in his condition, positive or not. For my part, I'll be completely honest with you regarding his prognosis."

"Thank you, Doctor," her reply was calm.

Figuring this was about all she could take in one day, Jacen stood. She stood also, looking a bit pale, but otherwise composed. Most of the girls he knew would be loath to hear the grisly details or grim prognosis of a loved one's treatment. Rei…he had the feeling she'd completely lose what little patience she had if she didn't know exactly what was going on. Even now, she looked slightly improved upon hearing his scant news; the doctor noted that there was no tremble near her hands and mouth.

"We'll pull him through, you and I," his choice of words made something in Rei's chest flutter. Jacen held out a hand, and she touched his palm with cool, white fingers.

"I have no doubt, Dr. Amos."

"Good," he said shortly, and nodded toward the whiskey with the faintest ghost of a smile. "Drink up."

Her eyes on his, Rei lifted the tumbler and took the smallest possible sip. With that, she set it down and padded out of the office.

_Brat._

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Quick note: In not-so-recent times, it actually was NOT uncommon for physicians to keep important details from patients' female relatives, in order to spare them any feminine "hysteria"…


	5. Evening Vigilance

Sailormoon is not mine.

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**Twilight Bastille: Chapter #5 – Evening Vigilance**

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For Rei, days at Manzanar began to blur together into a mirage of sand and sweat. Her schedule was fixed, and she worked through her myriad tasks without conscious thought or direction. At first, she'd had seemingly limitless energy to expend, but lately her body was tiring of the routine, the drudgery. She ignored it.

_Get up at dawn, which comes earlier and earlier as the summer months peak. Pull out the mop and cart. Clean the bathrooms until midmorning – Grandfather would want his work done. Push in chairs and scrub down walls with bleach and lye in the classrooms until late afternoon. If it's Thursday, collect your wages and Grandfather's. Go home. Sweep the floor; it's always gritty under your feet. Mend the new holes in your clothes._

She didn't want to think about the fact that she had far fewer clothes to patch up with Grandfather in the hospital.

And then Rei spent the rest of her evening at Grandfather's side.

Where, she couldn't fail to notice, the doctor spent his nights as well. Usually she arrived before he did, although on very rare occasions he found an earlier seat by Grandfather's cot. But they had nonetheless established a pattern.

They kept the night vigil together.

Rei was on her way over to the medical barracks now, losing herself in her thoughts as she walked over the rapidly cooling dirt paths. She knew what would happen tonight – it was the same thing that had happened almost every night for the last couple of weeks.

After she'd been sitting there for some time, Jacen would emerge from the lengthening shadows of the clinical room. He'd nod at her, greet her familiarly with the pet name he'd adopted without permission or explanation – " 'Evening, pigeon". He'd check Grandfather's vitals, adjust anything that needed modification, record in his bold, looped scrawl on a pad both his activities and the condition of his patient. Then proceed to fuss with a few details that Rei didn't exactly understand.

Always observant (_you watch him far more than is entirely necessary)_, she'd learned to interpret his facial expressions – a slight twist of the mouth when there was no change in his patient, a relaxing of the lines in his forehead when Grandfather's condition was good, storm-dark smoke in his eyes when it wasn't so good.

Finally, he would drop gracefully, but tiredly into the seat next to her.

And then he would wait.

That was all he did in her presence, but Rei correctly estimated that the doctor had to be doing a lot more for the old man throughout the day, while she worked outside. The medical staff was small enough as it was. _I wouldn't be surprised if the doctor sometimes bathes him, cleans him up._

Jacen was preserving something that Grandfather valued above all other things – his dignity. Even when bent so low as to clean up after other men, he had always cherished his pride. It seemed Jacen implicitly understood, despite being so different from her grandfather, with his blond mane and arrogant smiles.

How quickly things had changed in the brief span of time that she had known the mercurial doctor…the dry wind teased her senses and plucked at the convoluted web of her thoughts. Rei's mouth went cottony as she thought of how he'd looked at her in his room, in her hallway, at his doorstep… and how she'd instinctively responded to him, before she was able to check her reaction.

Even as they sat together these long nights, at first in tense, fearful silence, then making meaningless small talk, becoming comfortable with simple body language…that slender thread of fascination held. At first she'd been too concerned with her sleeping grandfather to even say her hellos and goodbyes to Jacen, but as days passed and little changed, Rei became helplessly aware of the man she shared her evenings with. She was responding to it, that easy sensuality he wore like a skin.

_Don't kid yourself – you know no matter what he says or does, in the end, you're just a Jap girl in his eyes._

She'd give him her thanks today. Coolly and confidently.

Rei pushed open the door to Grandfather's room and moved quickly to the side of the bed, touching his face and hands, trying for herself to check for any change in pulse or temperature. Feeling nothing different, she sank into one of the chairs adjacent.

Her fingers tightened over the plastic sides of the chair, and she pressed her knees together.

After a moment, Rei began to speak.

"How was your day, Grandpa? Boring? At least the doctor is often here to keep you company, not these ridiculous nurses. I've been doing the same thing as always, you know – your job is terrible, I don't know why you're always in such a rush to get to it – " Rei laughed weakly, and continued to ramble on, sometimes in Japanese, sometimes in English, whichever sounded more appropriate to her at the moment.

"You get out of here soon, don't expect me to paint these ugly walls to make this place prettier for you, I've got things to do…"

…

Jacen leaned against the window outside, fingertips caressing the face of the girl behind the glass. Rei leaned over the old man, her voice animated, gesturing and smiling at her audience as though she expected him laugh back and respond.

She never noticed him watching her from the outside.

Jacen's world had narrowed to this small room, and he lost focus of all things outside. In a few short weeks, he found his existence revolving around those of a girl with knowing eyes and her grandfather. He spent as much of his time as possible in this patient's room, only barely stopping to smile roguishly at the giggling secretary up front, to insouciantly wink at the few nurses gossiping and smoking outside.

His thoughts were always here.

Despite having specialized in neurology, his year with the military had taught him a great deal about practicing more general medicine, and that was all he had expected to deal with at Manzanar. Jacen was glad of his residency experience now, his particular fascination for the human brain. Those crucial seconds, minutes, and hours just after the elderly man's accident had not been easy for him to navigate. Even now, careful with Rei's grandfather to the smallest detail, Jacen often performed the mundane tasks that the nurses usually handled.

He refocused on the girl behind the window. Rei almost always arrived here earlier than he did, and he usually found her speaking to her grandfather like this.

_If anything wakes him up, it will be his granddaughter's voice._

After Jacen did his last cursory check of his patient for the day, he always found himself sitting beside her through the long hours of the dark. Technically, there was no need for him to stay; there was no real obligation for him to spend so much time with the elderly man during the day, either. He could always bid goodnight, smile, and leave.

He never did.

Loudly kicking the door open to give Rei fair warning, Jacen breezed into the room, clearing from his face any sign of his thoughts.

" 'Evening."

He bent over the old man, quickly checking his vitals.

"Good evening, Doctor."

Her low, lilting words made his blood heat.

Jacen kept his distance from her, crossing the room to grab his pad. He bent over a small side table, writing down his patient's current numbers with quick, rough strokes.

He felt the light pressure of a hand upon his shoulder. Without thinking, he took it and pulled playfully, a habit he had with old girlfriends.

Rei felt herself being jerked closer and her eyes darted to their linked hands. Her white fingers looked so small against his. _What does he think he's doing?_ If it had been one of the guards outside, her mind dimly registered, she would have thrown off his grip in an instant. _How is this different? Think, for God's sake!_

Rei couldn't think. She didn't want to wrench her hand from his like a prudish child, but…

She coughed politely.

"I – I just wanted to thank you for doing so much for my Grandfather, _Doctor_," Rei stressed the last word.

She saw Jacen's back stiffen with sudden awareness. Slowly, he turned to her, their hands still loosely conjoined. Rei stared up at his face, looking for some kind of recognition in his expression. Something flitted across his eyes, and looking down upon her as if for the first time, he gave Rei his usual mischievous smirk. Jacen tugged her a bit closer, and she could feel his breath teasingly stir her lashes.

"Don't mention it, pigeon," he said.

He dropped her hand, and Rei backed away, uncertain, before she turned and walked with quick steps to her seat. Jacen dropped into the chair beside her.

Rei paused a moment, trying to think of something simple, a non-loaded question. She didn't want to give him anything he could return with some flirtatious comment or joke, or worse, something that might upset him. Dr. Amos was a man of masks and disguises; there were skeletons in his closet that seemed too close to the door.

"Where are you from?" she finally asked. With her customary aplomb, Rei ignored how strange that question probably sounded, coming completely out of left field.

Surprised by the sound of her voice where he had expected an awkward silence, Jacen took a moment to reply. "New York – Manhattan, really. And you?"

"Originally Tokyo," she answered. "Grandfather and I moved to a ranch in the San Fernando Valley some years ago."

"I see," he nodded, though he actually didn't. What reason was there for a young girl, who would be unable to find any employment, and her grandfather, who was too old to work also, to come here? Most immigrants were young families, able to support their elders…

"Have you got any other family?" Jacen asked, observing as her mouth pressed into a thin slash.

"No," Rei answered calmly, too calmly.

There was a brief silence. Jacen leaned back in his chair, the plastic legs creaking slightly with his weight.

"Well, then, I've got plenty of stories about my own to keep you, if you care to hear. My Uncle Terrence lives in the valley too, actually. Preacher. Funny guy…" He pulled out a cigarette, casually lit it as he spoke.

Jacen was lying. His Uncle Terrence was an oil baron in Texas, whose head was probably interchangeable with his ass, for all his business acumen. That was all right; Jacen never talked to him, nor anyone else in his family, so the little white lie wasn't a problem.

He didn't know her well enough to ask anything truly personal, but he sure as hell wasn't going to revert back to small talk, so Jacen relied upon what he did well: entertain. He didn't even have to think about these little stories; he'd used them so many times to amuse various acquaintances at parties that they came naturally. As he spoke, he watched the change in her. Rei's taut posture relaxed, her lips parting gently, eyes widening with interest. _So very different from the girl I thought I knew. The more time I spend with her, the more I realize what an enigma she really is._

An hour later, Rei's laughter sounded again, soft and husky. "I don't believe you, Doctor. Nobody would do that to a girl, not even someone kin to you," her words were teasingly acidic, bereft of the anxiety he always heard in her voice.

Jacen took a long drag off the last inch of his smoke. "Believe it," he shrugged. He could see her eyelids drooping, her struggle to contain her yawns as the night stretched on. _Odd. It's not all that late._

There was a brief pause.

"I didn't know that you smoked," her voice had taken on a slumberous, dreamy tone. For the last fifteen minutes or so, her replies to his questions and stories had become more nonsensical, less guarded. He wasn't surprised; Rei looked exhausted, dark smudges bruising under her eyes.

As a matter of fact, he barely smoked, not liking the smell of it clinging to him, but when he was tired it made him feel alert. Curls of ash spiraled toward the ceiling as the corner of his lip twisted up slightly.

"There's a lot you don't know about me, pigeon." He closed his eyes for a moment, enjoying the languorous mood, the slow rise of smoke to the windows.

When he looked at her again, her eyes were shut. She opened her mouth for a prodigious yawn, showing off rows of tiny, pearl-like teeth, then belatedly covered it with her fist. As she drifted into half-sleep, her fist drooped behind her head.

Jacen watched her dozing off for a moment, eyes veiled, before he tossed his stubbed-out cigarette in the glass ashtray. Rei wouldn't appreciate him carrying her back, though he could certainly do it. Her barracks were far, but she didn't look like she weighed much more than a child. Jacen knelt by her chair.

"Rei," he breathed. She stirred, lashes lifting slightly. "Come on, I'll take you back to your barracks. Not safe for a girly like you to walk back alone, hm?"

She nodded sleepily and let him double an arm around her waist. Jacen briefly wondered how tired she had to be, to let him do this without a murmur of complaint. _Why? What's she doing all day?_ Shrugging, he pulled her up easily, one hand on her hip to support her movement. Her head tipped to his shoulder, and he felt her steady breathing warm against his shirt. They began to slowly walk out the door, leisurely, Rei walking as though in a dream. At first, she barely managed to keep her eyes open, her head upright, but as they continued, the warm night air cast its spell. As Rei began to stumble, Jacen gave up and simply swung her into his arms. She protested with a few sleepy mumbles, but they gradually subsided. _I figured. She weighs little. Almost too little._

He strode across the moonlit dirt pathway. Across the camp's center, a group of guards laughed and shoved at each other, too drunk for the early hour. Instinctively, Jacen placed a hand over Rei's ear, keeping her head close to his shoulder. He felt her stir slightly beneath his hand, but her eyes remained closed, trustingly.

The guards turned at his approach and instantly quieted, most of them not wanting to comment, not with the doctor's cool, unwavering stare challenging them. One, however, had imbibed a bit more than his fellows.

"Looks like a cold fish to me, Doc," he slurred. "I…I like a Jap bitch with a little spirit…you know?"

"Can't say I've ever had to force a woman," Jacen responded lightly. "Sounds like you have, though."

The guard's face turned blotchy red, and he took a menacing step forward that ended up being more of a keeling lurch. His fellows held him back, and Jacen easily sidestepped him. They reached her barracks without seeing another soul.

Jacen shoved open the door and walked through the gap in the curtains. He dumped her onto the bed with little ceremony, bending quickly to pull off her slippers. He remembered past girlfriends letting out their elaborate hairstyles when they slept, and thought that all those pins probably hurt to boot, so he pulled at Rei's simple bun with rough hands until the cool silk loosened and slipped invitingly through his fingers.

As he turned to leave, Rei murmured dreamily, "Your stories are funny, Doctor."

Jacen smiled faintly, his back still to her. "Thanks."

"So…next time…tell me the truth about your family…mm? I'd like to know…about them."

He turned to face her, startled, but her eyes had closed already and she was fast asleep. The tiniest of dream-smiles curved her lips, and Jacen walked out into the dark quickly, not wanting to kiss her and break the spell.

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	6. Spilling Out

Sailormoon = not mine.

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**Twilight Bastille: Chapter #6 – Spilling Out**

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"So, you take the X and square it here to find the quadratic root of…ah…" Rei couldn't remember what she was talking about for the life of her.

Hotaru looked up at her questioningly. "But I thought you squared B, Miss Rei."

"Oh, right, of course. Sorry, Hotaru. You're correct. Let's continue, then."

The girl nodded eagerly, and both dark heads bent over the paper.

But Rei couldn't keep her thoughts still; they scattered and flew like fragile paper cranes. The numbers before her thickened and swerved, losing all clarity. She blinked to keep them straight, and fought the temptation to keep her burning-dry eyes shut longer.

"Here."

A small plastic pouch materialized before her, and Rei coughed at the tiny sugar crystals wafting up, pushing it away.

"What – what is that, Hotaru?"

"Just some candy." The younger girl continued to focus upon her homework, childish voice even. "You look like you need it, Miss Rei. You're so tired and pale…I've never seen you like this before. Maybe you should talk to the doctor?"

"Thanks," Rei murmured, untying the ribbon around the bag. She wasn't terribly hungry, but she couldn't just turn down Hotaru's gift.

Peach-flavored wafers, crumbling into golden dust at the bottom of the bag. The smell was intoxicating, sweet and tart at the same time…God, she _was_ starving. In a matter of seconds, the wafers had been devoured.

Hotaru absently reached for one of the candies before she realized the bag was empty. She turned to her tutor, her lamplike eyes wide.

"Oh, dear…you're _that_ hungry, Miss Rei?"

Rei forced a weak smile. Her stomach, angry at being teased with so small an offering, was already clenching in hunger. She'd have to wait until dinner at the mess hall, still hours away.

"I'm sorry, Hotaru. I don't know what's wrong with me today – I'll get you another bag of candy. Promise. And I'll talk to the doctor too," she added, amused by the sudden concern on the girl's face.

…

A few hours later, Rei reached her final destination for the evening. She dragged her palms over the glass-paned windows to each infirmary room. Grandfather was in the last one down the hall. She quickened her pace. Maybe Jacen was already there?

She'd begun to think of him as that – just Jacen – last night when he'd carried her home from the hospital. Rei remembered it as little more than a dream, but it certainly proved that he wasn't interested in anything but friendship with her. Oh, he always flirted, but there was no real desire in his eyes, hadn't been since he'd cornered her in her home, while Grandfather slept. Even that memory seemed distant now, hazy, as though she'd only imagined Jacen's interest. And perhaps she had – Rei had to admit that she was totally unused to indifference from any man. On the one hand, Rei liked that she knew she could trust him. On the other, his platonic regard rankled more than she cared to let on…

_Listen to yourself – you should be thankful. Even if he was attracted to you, you'd end up as nothing to him – an exotic plaything to be tossed away. You know what it's like to be kicked aside, don't you? And honestly, how long do you think you could resist? You're hardly immune,_ Rei argued with herself.

"How does that feel, Mr. Takahashi?"

Rei recognized his voice, emerging from two rooms back, and she retraced her steps, pausing in the doorway.

Jacen held a small boy's spindly ankle between his fingertips, turning it an infinitesimal degree one way, and then the other. The boy, who Rei recognized as one of the orphans – _Ryu, wasn't it?_ – was shaking all over, but Jacen held his leg perfectly still.

"How about now? No? Here?"

Ryu shook his head.

"It doesn't hurt at all? Not even when – oh, so that's where it hurts, hm?"

The boy nodded, tears looming large in the corners of his eyes.

"Well, then, my lucky friend," Jacen concluded, gently putting the leg down on the table, where it promptly began to tremble along with the rest of his body, "you've just got yourself a minor sprain. I'll send along some painkillers to your big brother. Use ice for the swelling and elevate the ankle. If it gets any worse, come back to me. I'll get you some crutches – "

He dashed out a quick note on his pad, ripped the page out, and handed it to the boy. The doctor reached beneath the examination table, finding a child-sized pair of crutches as well, and pulled them out. Ryu grabbed them and leaped off the table.

Jacen rolled his eyes, easily catching Ryu midair and putting him down gently. Kids never learned.

"Be _careful_," he intoned menacingly, eyeballing the boy. Terrified, Ryu nodded once and beat a hasty retreat_. He moves pretty damn fast on those crutches,_ Jacen thought, smirking.

Rei quickly sidestepped the limping child, her darkly amused gaze coming up to meet Jacen's. He returned it with a quick quirk of his brow, which quickly furrowed as he took in the sight of her.

"You all right, pigeon?"

She blinked, startled. _I suppose he wouldn't be a very observant physician if he didn't see what Hotaru did – do I really look that bad?_ "I'm fine. Why shouldn't I be?"

His skeptical gaze dropped to her sharp collarbones, down to her slender waist. Rei flushed, reminded of his once-over the first night she'd met him. The doctor hadn't looked at her like that ever since – that appraising, desirous look. "You look tired. Hungry as a jackal, too."

Rei shrugged. "I did eat already, but I'll snack on something later tonight."

"See that you do." Jacen's tone was uncommonly peremptory, but his countenance softened with a slow, easy smile as he turned to the window, watched Ryu make his way outside.

"He comes in here every month with a different sprain or cut or scrape. Some kids never figure their limbs out, I guess. Rations are tough on growing boys – just wait 'til he discovers sugar."

"I don't blame him for getting restless," Rei commented. The longing in her voice conveyed a world of meaning – to him, at least.

He stepped into the hallway, making for Grandfather's room, and she followed.

"Doctor?" her voice was hesitant.

"Mm?"

"I – I don't really remember going back home last night, it's all dreamlike to me. I've been a bit tired lately, it's true…but thank you, for helping me home."

_Helping you? More like carrying you, sweetheart._ Jacen didn't voice the thought, as a lightning-quick image of Rei sleeping, hair spread out like a cloak beneath her, danced across his memory. It was costing him some effort, hiding his fascination for the girl behind a jocular, almost brotherly facade.

"Don't worry about it. You're thanking me a lot these days."

She shrugged. "I can't repay these debts. All I can do is appreciate them."

"You don't need to think of them as debts."

"I do."

There was steel in her voice, and Jacen let it drop, irritated by her constant adherence to formalities. The return of his thoroughly alert and armored Rei was almost unwelcome. Was that all that kindness meant to her? A loan, a liability? _What,_ some inner voice mocked him, _you expect something more? _They'd reached the old man's room. All was the same, as he'd expected. Jacen and Rei dropped into their chairs simultaneously to wait.

Still irate, Jacen cut right to the chase in beginning a conversation. There were things about this wild, disdainful creature that he wanted to know. He'd never tiptoed around anybody's feelings before. Why start now?

"Why did you come here? To California, I mean?"

Rei cast him a quizzical glance. Hadn't she explained this last night? "I came with my grandfa-"

He waved a quick hand, cutting her off. "No. You would have known a girl of your age – you're what, eighteen? Nineteen? – and a man of your grandfather's years would have almost no chance of finding work. Especially back then – Dust Bowl years."

Her spine straightened, like an angry cat's. "Nineteen. And I don't have to explain this to you, Doctor."

Feigning nonchalance, Jacen leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes as he felt his pockets for a cigarette. None.

_Damn._ He hated that the girl's stiff reserve riled him so easily – he was just her grandfather's doctor, and reticence was all he should expect. _You fool. __You know you want more._

A few minutes passed in uncomfortable silence before her voice cut the air, icy and too high.

"My father sent us here."

When Jacen didn't say anything, just stayed where he was, leaning back, eyes closed, arms loosely folded behind his head, Rei continued.

"He's a politician. In the Cabinet or Chamberman of something. I don't know. I don't care, either." Rei's tone had assumed a belligerent edge, like a child's. "He's too damn good for us, I guess. Grandfather and I ran a shrine in Tokyo, you know, and it was too small-time, too rustic for Papa. When it looked like he might really make it big in the political world, he didn't want anybody to know he married into Mama's family, because they were poor and old-fashioned." She continued, barely pausing for breath. "I…remember being very little, when my parents were happy together, but when his career took off…Papa forgot all about her. Us. So when my father thought the press might start snooping, he sent us abroad. Big ranch, monthly checks. A good private school. Catholic. And he promised a lot of things, a lot of empty things, but – but I'm here now."

Rei stopped before her words became any more disjointed. She'd only told him because she didn't want him to think she was some pitiable creature, unable to talk about her sob story past. She wanted him to see her strength. And here Rei was, noisily swallowing her regrets into a huge lump at the bottom of her throat.

"I guess there's no way he could have predicted this would happen, with the war and the Jap camps…but, you know…he'll never understand how it feels, to be hated for something he can't change. I'm here because I'm Japanese, right? I can't…change that – I wouldn't – I'm proud of it. But him," her voice dropped. "I hate him because of what he could have done, could have changed. He could have accepted us as family. He's over there, in a land of familiar faces, while we're here, all alone. He'll never understand what it meant to see that sign that told me where I could and couldn't go. What it meant to have those gates close behind me."

The words seemed to flood out, buoyed upon a river of unshed tears. Rei snapped her mouth shut, amazed that she'd spilled so much of what she'd never told anybody else. She watched him warily, waiting for a reaction. _Oh, God, I think I'll cry if he says he's sorry, if he looks at me with sympathy in those eyes. I can't take that, not from him._

Jacen hadn't moved a muscle. His eyes were still closed, his lean frame stretched out in the chair. The doctor spoke after a pause, his words calculated to be curiously irreverent. "He sounds like a real dick."

Her laughter came out husky, choked, but it came out anyway, and they were both grateful for that. Jacen knew very well that she couldn't bear to let him see her cry.

"Yeah," she laughed weakly, "he was. Is."

…

Suddenly alert, Jacen sat up, leaned forward. A strangely reckless mood was taking hold of him now, replacing his prior irritation. He recognized it for what it was – frustration. Definitely frustration and some desire for the girl sitting next to him, a need that he'd forbidden himself to act upon. Now that she'd opened herself to him, that she'd almost let him know her tears…Jacen didn't know what to feel anymore.

So he talked.

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, my Pop's a real piece of work, as well. Drunkard. He turned my brother Andrew into one, too. He was a little older than me. We almost looked like twins, used to lay waste to Manhattan between the two of us before the operation, there was never enough booze, enough women, enough hours in the night…and my mother, total ice princess – "

Rei had no doubt that this was the truth about Jacen's family, not the embellished half-truths of last night. Something in his eyes was gathering, some storm. He spoke too quickly, and the quick flash of his teeth was more grimace than grin. Rei was familiar with it now, the way the lines of his face moved when he was angry, happy, sad. She'd watched him long enough, fumbled at the truth of what she wanted from him.

"Operation?" she ventured.

Jacen hadn't meant to mention it.

"So, all these blue-blooded families in New York," his words were acid, "their kids get into the best universities without even trying. Law school, medical school, especially. They come out of there with no idea of what they're doing. Hell, they don't need the cash, so why work too hard? It's all about the prestige, obviously. And all these families…they're friends. At least, they pretend to be. They keep all the jobs in the family, so to speak, so everyone sees the same few attorneys, same few physicians, and so on."

Rei knew what came next. She always did.

"It was a pretty minor procedure, honestly. Should have been quick and easy. But Dr. - Jesus, I don't even remember his name – he…he probably barely had ten successful operations under his belt. Andrew bled to death."

She couldn't see his face, lost in the shadows between them. Jacen stood abruptly to check Grandfather's numbers, although they both knew there was no change. Rei watched his hands. They didn't tremble, not even now. They never did. They were always quick and completely capable, and Rei understood now.

He continued, flatly. "I joined up as a doctor with the Eighth as soon as my residency was up, right after he…and when I got typhoid overseas, they shipped me back to recover. Same hospital he died in. I got out of there as fast as I could."

She couldn't conjure up something funny to make him laugh, like he had, so Rei said what she was thinking to his motionless back.

"Listen, Jacen," his name tasted strange. "I'm sorry – you know, what I said when I met you, when you said you couldn't get Grandfather's medicines, and I was so angry – and I asked you what kind of…" Rei trailed off, licked her dry lips. "I think I know what kind of doctor you are, now. I meant to say it before."

She stood, feeling the way her words charged the air. "You're not like him."

_Who am I talking about?_ Rei thought shakily. _That doctor who killed his brother? My father?_

Jacen didn't turn to face her, but when he spoke, it seemed that he knew.

"You're right. I'm better."

There was so much pain in his voice that Rei didn't think twice before stepping closer, placing her palms on his back and resting her cheek against his thin shirt. Was it a simple gesture, meant to comfort? She was aware of nothing else but the heat of his skin through the cotton, burning into her. When she tried to step back, her feet refused to move, her body melting into his. _I can't be the only one who feels like this – it's impossible to ignore._ Bewildered, Rei exhaled a half-sob, half-sigh, the heat of her breath like a bullet through his flesh.

Jacen stood ramrod straight, knuckles white over the iron bars of Grandfather's cot. She could feel his shoulders roll beneath her fingertips, but he did not draw away from her touch.

"Don't tempt me, pigeon." His words were low, raw. "You don't know what you're getting yourself into."

Although Rei couldn't see his face, she was pretty damn sure this was one of the few times since she'd met him that he wasn't smiling one bit.

They remained like that, neither willing to be the first to go. He knew she wouldn't move, and she knew he couldn't.

And so, neither moved a muscle at all.

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	7. Dry Bread and Wine

Sailormoon is not mine.

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**Twilight Bastille: Chapter #7 – Dry Bread and Wine**

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Rei felt half on the verge of tears, half on the verge of laughter. _When did this become so complicated? _her thoughts roiled on a hot sea. _I have to let go. This is too much. Too fast._

She lifted her hands from his shirt, startled to see how tightly she had been clutching at the cotton as she'd momentarily lost herself, so close to his scent, his skin. There were tight wrinkles in the cloth, gradually releasing in time with Jacen's slow, controlled breathing.

Everything else in the room, including her grandfather, blurred into the background. It was beginning to sink into Rei's consciousness that if she hadn't let go, something…irrevocable…would have certainly occurred.

_Would I have stopped it?_

She backed out of the cold room silently, biting her lip with sudden fear. The acrid pall of old cigarette smoke stung her eyes to involuntary tears. When she couldn't see his rigid form anymore, she turned and ran out the door.

Jacen heard her soft footsteps, padding out the door and then pounding down the hall, and loathed himself for his immediate, obvious reaction to her touch. The facade was torn down – he couldn't make believe he didn't want her anymore, and she couldn't pretend indifference to his desire. He had to admit, the truth felt good; Jacen wasn't a man used to having to hide his passions. Unfortunately, he would still have to deny them. _You have a goal here. Remember that._

Well, it was out on the table now. Rei knew exactly what he wanted from her, what he warned her from. She could deal with it however she liked.

What had she meant by it? Simple comfort? No. Empty, physical gestures weren't in her character; Rei shied from contact, was unused to the reassuring emphasis of flesh and bone. Something else had driven her to touch him, some temptation he didn't exactly know. _But I can sure as hell guess. Shit._ The doctor ran his hands through his hair, rubbing his scalp in frustration. The feel of her breasts pressed into his spine, her small hands gripping his shirt…the map of her body to his robbed him of all sense.

Jacen wanted to feel it again.

He opened his eyes, refocusing upon his patient. Grandfather slept peacefully, his face unmarred by wrinkles of worry.

_Wake up_, he urged silently.

Sometimes, sitting here alone, Jacen wanted to throw things. He wanted to rip the needles and wires from the elderly man's skin, shake him back into consciousness, see those eyes blink and reopen. He was a patient man, with years of learned discipline, and yet he still yearned to snap his fingers and see results. In his experience, neurologists had the worst of it – with ailments and accidents quickly diagnosable, rarely curable. If there was one thing Jacen couldn't tolerate about his profession, it was the anticipation, the endless waiting for an outcome that might never come to pass. The doctor pressed his elbows down on the bed rails, leaning over his sleeping patient as though he could impart to him his own strength and youth.

_I've done everything right, old man. Everything in my power to keep you with her._ _So return the goddamn favor._

Jacen dimmed the light and walked out, hands in pockets, brow furrowed in thought.

…

Rei turned restlessly for the fourth time in her bed, sheets twisting between her toes, eyes wide open in the moonlight, wakefully dreaming. She tried to concentrate on sleep, but nothing was working.

The moment she'd returned home, Rei had unenthusiastically tried to make herself a snack, despite her lack of hunger. She'd swept the floor and done other myriad chores that didn't need to be done. Finally, she had simply wandered aimlessly around the small barracks, arms wrapped tightly around herself. Her body cried for rest, but Rei knew that sleep would elude her tonight.

She could still feel the texture of his shirt in her hands, the burn of his body to hers. _And I was an idiot to think he didn't want me just as much. Fooled by another one of his ever-changing masks. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever see his true face. What am I going to do? This is completely new to me…I've never…Oh, God, how do I know this isn't what he looks like with every woman he's ever been with?_

And even more frightening – _Does it matter? Can you refuse him?_

An uneasy slumber of about an hour, and she eventually rose at dawn, eyes red and dry, limbs trembling with weariness. Her throat itched a bit, and Rei guessed that she would probably be ill the next morning. She was briefly reminded of Hotaru's worry for her yesterday, and quickly on the heels of that memory came Jacen's perceptive gaze…

Rei steeled herself. It didn't matter. Work was fast becoming her only solace, a distraction from the ever-closed eyes of one man and the too-watchful eyes of the other.

…

The day passed quickly, dazedly, choking heat searing papery-thin flesh.

By noon, Rei knew that she was sicker than she had thought. She coughed, leaning on the desk she was cleaning. Her eyes burned and her skin felt hot and tender. _I'd better head home and rest… I'll just double up my time tomorrow and see Grandfather the day after._ She stood up, suppressing another coughing fit, and made her way out the door, wincing at the dull throb in her throat.

The sun beat down mercilessly, scorching her black hair so she could barely stand to touch it. She glanced up, shading her eyes from the light, and was alarmed to see the barracks roofs waver and darken in her vision. Rei hastened home, relieved when she finally stumbled into the relatively cool shade of her room. She yanked her hair out of its bun and stripped off her work clothes, uncaring of where they fell. A quick glass of too-warm water and she fell into bed gratefully, her vision fading to ashes the moment her head fell back onto the pillows.

Unfortunately, the peace of Rei's sleep did not last long.

The dreams began almost immediately. The normal ones, the ones she always remembered when she woke in the morning. Little feet on mossy stone steps. Lime-green grass, comic book colors, chocolate mud, hurting-blue sky. A closed black car and cigarette smoke that stung her eyes. The familiar texture of cotton, bunched in her fists. Now a little bit different. Angry silverblue eyes, like the scales of fish swimming or a moon behind clouds. The moon began to recede, thunderheads and thick fog rolling in over the water, and Rei sobbed for her loss, the ocean of her tears wetting the cotton, dousing the cigarette, widening the sea. Underwater, she could not breathe.

_"Don't leave,"_ she pleaded. _"Don't leave me."_

"Rei."

_"Don't leave."_

"Wake up, pigeon. I'm here."

The voice was too loud, too commanding to be a fiction of her mind. Rei jerked awake, eyes wide and unfocused before they latched onto his burning blue gaze, less than an inch away. She flung her face away from his, coughing long and hard into her pillow.

The room was dim, a lamp shoved closer to the bed providing a flickering glow. Outside, the sun had just barely set, and a cool desert wind wafted through the open windows. The sweat on her skin chilled, but Rei still felt stifled, breathless.

Jacen occupied the edge of her narrow bed, curling his long frame around hers to make space for himself. She was cradled in his arms, one hand protectively wrapped in her hair, the other beneath her loose nightshirt, supportive. His breath fanned her cracked lips, and she stared at him, wordless. For a moment, the harsh lines of his face softened with relief, and Rei was acutely aware of his warm, strong hand curved around her spine, his smell of sun-skin and leathery aftershave.

Suddenly, an icy pressure between her shoulderblades made her gasp, and she twisted like a cat, trying to see what the object was. When Rei turned back, the doctor's face had smoothed into blankness, a faint smile of habit playing around his lips. The _dun-dun_ of her heartbeat became evident in the silence, and Rei quickly realized it was a stethoscope. He listened briefly, nodded once, lips tight, and pushed her down onto the bed.

Calmly, Jacen proceeded to roll up her nightshirt.

She clutched at it, startled by this new audacity. He brushed the weak flutter of her fingers aside, pulling the fraying cloth up just beneath her breasts. One warm hand rested on her flat belly, and he pressed gently into the milky skin, keenly watching her for any reaction.

"Does that hurt?"

"I – no – what are you doing here?" Rei gasped, not expecting the question and thoroughly distracted by the skin-to-skin contact.

"I expected to see you at the hospital tonight, and I didn't," Jacen answered, features still arranged blandly, pleasantly. "Here?"

His hand strayed beneath her bellybutton, pressing just below her abdomen. Rei's breath hitched. "No."

Jacen rolled her shirt down, much to Rei's relief, and pushed her up completely against the headboard. Since she'd woken up, he hadn't looked her directly in the eye, keeping his gaze fixed almost…beyond her. The doctor did so now, curling his palm around the nape of her neck, watching some invisible thing behind her head, seeming deep in thought.

"What are you _doing_?"

"Your temperature." Leaning close, Jacen took her hot face between his hands and studied her eyes, turning her one way, then another to let the light catch her irises. She was helplessly aware of his thigh pressed against hers, even through layers of clothing and blankets. Warmth radiated from his face, so close to hers that their lashes brushed.

"Open your mouth."

Still dazed, Rei obeyed. She noticed, somewhat vaguely, that he wasn't calling her Rei or pigeon anymore.

"All right, you can shut it." He pulled a pad out of his bag, along with a small jar of pills that rattled loudly in the pervasive silence.

"Why are you – ? – I don't need medicine. I've had it before, it's just a throat bug, Jacen," she absently used his real name, he noticed, not Doctor.

"It's not a fucking throat bug."

Rei fell into unaccustomed silence. She realized, belatedly – still feeling dull, sluggish – that he was absolutely furious. The only time she'd ever seen him nearly this angry was when she'd barged into his barracks, so long ago. Now, as then, Jacen's eyes hinted – but she hadn't quite caught on until his words like bullets told. He made vicious slashes on the pad.

"J-Jacen?"

Jacen ripped the note out and threw it onto the bed, along with the pills. "Penicillin, three pills a day. I could drag you down to the hospital to X-ray your lungs…but I've seen enough pneumonia to know it. Starving yourself, working all day, sleeping little…it's no wonder."

He pulled a tray that she hadn't noticed off the small nightstand, full of cut fruit, along with some water. "So if you don't shove all this down your skinny throat, I swear to God I'll snap it for you." The doctor nodded toward the plate. "Go ahead. Eat it. I'll watch."

"Wait a minute – " Rei began, irritated at his highhandedness, and was interrupted by another coughing fit.

Jacen stood abruptly and began to pace. The room was dim now, the lamplight feeble, but she could just make out his hand, coming up to rub at his face in _what? Frustration? Disgust?_ Finally, he stopped near the door, features invisible in the dark.

"You think you're some kind of martyr? That if you don't eat and don't sleep and work all day, God will feel sorry for poor little you and wake Grandpappy up?"

"How can you – "

"It doesn't work that way, Rei. So if you think playing saint is going to do him any good, you're wrong. Maybe dead wrong, in fact, if I hadn't come by."

"Listen," Rei said abruptly, shoving aside the food. "I won't take this shit from you just because you think you know better. I refuse to owe you any more than I already do. I can take care of myself."

"Owe?" Jacen repeated coolly. "You think I'm here to take something from you? Use your cash to feed your own skinny little ass," he gestured to her gaunt frame. "I don't want anything from you. More to the point, I think it's pretty damn obvious you have no idea how to take care of yourself. Look at you! If your grandfather saw – God!" He broke off, looked out the window. "I expected better of you, Rei."

"I'm not a little girl," she countered, stung by his scorn. "I promise, you have no responsibility for my person or my choices. My grandfather understands what it means to sacrifice things, even if you don't."

"Oh, I know something about sacrifice," his gaze on her was black with something Rei didn't want to name, and she swallowed. "Your grandfather would never have asked this sacrifice of you," Jacen finished softly.

_I was so wrapped up in the old man…if I'd just given her another look, if I'd just connected the dots…_

Jacen stepped forward, placing his hands on either side of the girl and leaning in to face her. His words came like blows. "From now on, you damn well listen to what I say. I tell you when you get up, when you eat, when you work, and trust me, that's not anytime soon."

"Hell, no," Rei spat, trying to ignore the cold rain of his stare. "If I want to be up and working tomorrow, I'll do it." She didn't plan on it…but Rei couldn't stand his bullying. "God, why do you care so much, anyway?"

Rei regretted her words the moment they slipped from her mouth. Jacen's eyes were those of an animal's, and she could feel the sheets beneath her bunching in his fists. She didn't move but to squeeze her eyes shut, her breath labored. Involuntarily, he leaned closer, as though drawn by a magnet. Agonizing hours seemed to pass before her lashes fluttered open on their own.

He was gone.

…

Rei took only a few small, thoughtful nibbles of her meal and a couple sips of water before sleep took her again, a welcoming black blanket. Her exhausted mind simply gave out, too weakened to plague her with dreams.

…

"Why do I care so much, anyway?" Jacen repeated the question derisively, turning in his hands a full bottle of excellent vintage, a gift from a RAF buddy and patient. No, that was the good stuff. He put it away, reaching for the half-full handle in his cabinet instead. Better to get shitfaced with cheap, familiar friends when you're in love.

_Love. You're a fool, Jacen, to not put together this simplest of puzzles sooner._

Jacen recalled with a shudder the stench of illness in her barracks, disturbingly familiar. How she lay on her cot, still as death but for her sudden bouts of delirium. Lips going blue as she struggled for breath in her nightmares. He'd dropped by her side, called her name in fear. Fear led to anger and he'd never been angrier with anybody in his life. Pneumonia…sure, manageable, but he'd seen too many boys – pilots, their medics – succumb to it before. The Air Force wasn't so short on penicillin, but Manzanar was. He was glad of his private stash of supplies. His mind gladly rambled over the technical aspects of treatment, and Jacen was conscious of his avoidance of the subject at hand.

He wondered, rather detachedly, when it had happened. When he had crossed the line between want and need.

_So you love her. What the hell are you going to do about it?_

He needed a cig, but he was still out. So Jacen drained the amber fluid in the tumbler, and refilled. Again. _You haven't got a hope in hell, buddy,_ he jeered at himself. _The girl's like stone._ No, that wasn't right. Rei was just the opposite of unfeeling; if anything, she was too hot to touch. Her emotions burned so close to the surface that she forced them away, worked to maintain that stubbornly reserved veneer. But under it, Jacen knew, there was _life_. Hadn't that been the first thing he noticed about her? Rei had never been anything he expected her to be; she was perceptive, spirited, proud…

It seemed that the more comfortably muddled his mind became, the louder the hurt in his chest grew, a gaping wound of unanswerable questions.

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	8. Moon Face

I don't own Sailormoon.

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**Twilight Bastille: Chapter #8 – Moon Face**

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Noon shone brightly through the open windows, bringing with it a gust of wind that set Rei to coughing and choking on the dust. She reached over with a rapidly strengthening hand to close the shutters and slumped back against her pillows, staring at the ceiling.

Rei had dutifully stayed in bed for the last few days, mostly sleeping, waking only for food and medicine. Whatever was in those pills, they had quickly reversed her symptoms, and her strength was coming back. True to his word, Jacen had come by every day, ostensibly to put the fear of God in the girl. All traces of his easygoing manner were gone.

He usually laid out her meals and medication while she was asleep. She never knew exactly when Jacen arrived; whenever Rei woke up, he was there, waiting, expression distant, body language caged and eager to leave.

Now, the doctor never stayed longer than absolutely necessary, and Rei acutely felt the sting of their lost companionship. Jacen made no secret of the fact that he considered time spent by her bedside wasted. At the same time, she was still furious at his overbearing treatment of her. She nursed her hurts in silence, as did he, and in Rei's mind, at least, they were back to square one.

Rei thought of the doctor's hands, unbidden, as she recalled his brusque examination of her. Their effortless strength and skill attracted her to Jacen as much did his enigmatic smile; the simple intimacy of his rough palm against her pale skin shocked her, made her wonder what his touch might be like if his intention was to seduce.

_Not that he'd want to_, she reflected bitterly. _He made his feelings clear – to him, I'm just a scrawny, immature little girl. Was I lying to myself when I thought that he…he wanted…_

What kind of woman did he favor, anyway?

_Likely not anyone who pisses him off as much as I do._ Rei appeared singularly adept when it came to lighting Jacen's all-but-interminable fuse, because she had yet to see him as anything less than effortlessly charming with other members of her sex, junior nurses and ancient schoolmarms alike.

She could see him now, with that girl he'd been speaking to on the phone – what was her name, Tara? Therese? making love to her, her painted nails digging into his broad shoulders as he…Rei's stomach clenched hollowly at the thought of another woman wrapped in his sheets, inviting. Would Jacen want her if she was taller, rounder, softer? Older?

_Stop it, Rei._

Rei had difficulty remaining upset with him when he was absent; it was while Jacen was here, bossing her around, that she found him completely insufferable. At any rate, lying abed for so long gave her all too many hours to contemplate, an activity she'd been strictly avoiding for a long time now. Unfortunately, Rei's thoughts were taking shape in a way she didn't like. She had to end this impossible attraction, before something happened between them – it didn't matter who started it – and he inevitably walked away from her, just like…Rei swallowed. _No, not everybody._ Grandfather was still here. It was Grandfather who needed her now.

…

Jacen, for his part, was doing his best to detach himself from the situation. He wasn't about to allow himself to become so besotted with her that it interfered with his duties. Of course, Rei was his patient, too, but he had a personal stake in her and her grandfather that he couldn't write off as a mere obligation. Jacen spent far more hours than necessary with both of them, taking on further responsibilities that he didn't need.

All the same, he couldn't bear to spend _too_ much time alone with Rei. Now that he had identified the problem – and it was a problem, because the girl didn't care for him or even trust him, for that matter – it was torture to be with her, to watch her sleeping face as unreachable as the moon. He'd always teased her, tried to lay her bare, as was his wont, but Rei remained maddeningly circumspect.

Oh, she was bold in her own way, of course, but whatever seducing Rei did, she did unknowingly. In many ways, she was far more mature than Jacen would have given a girl her age credit for, forced to grow up fast in hard circumstances, but in comparison to some of the women he had known – intimately – Rei was all too naive.

Jacen understood women, infuriating creatures that they were. He'd never been turned down that he could remember, and with time he'd learned their whims and weaknesses. And so, it vexed Jacen that he had no idea what to do with Rei, as unpredictable and contradictory as she was. For the first time in his life, it was she who held all the cards.

Accordingly, the doctor gave Rei's bedside a wide berth. One day, he was afraid, she would wake up and see the torment written on his face as he watched her sleep, and she would know. And then what would she do? Jacen didn't know, and he was too much a coward to want to find out.

Rousing himself from his thoughts, Jacen glanced at the clock. He was a bit late going to her barracks, and would have to shorten his time there in order to come back and check up on her grandfather. Even though she was forbidden to join him now (another unspoken rule he enforced in light of her illness), the doctor still watched over the elderly man. Not so much for her sake anymore…he didn't know exactly why, but it was more peaceful to stay there with his patient than to go back to his empty room, fall tiredly into his lonely bed. Anyway, it was time to be heading out.

"'Night, beautiful," he offered absently to the receptionist, who was more than halfway through her golden years.

"Good night, Dr. Amos," she grinned back, but her smile slipped a bit. "Doctor? I don't mean to intrude, but you're looking a bit…tired, ah, worn down, these days. You know, none of us girls would say a word if you just took some time off – there's nothing so serious here that I couldn't handle it for a day or two…"

"Florence," Jacen interrupted, "if you're trying to tell me I've already lost my boyish looks, I'll have you know I'm not yet thirty. Not even close to my prime, but…" He paused. "…if you'd like to come over sometime, see how energetic I still am – "

"Oh, for crying out loud, stop it, Doctor," Florence rolled her eyes, the faintest of blushes tinting her old cheeks. "Get on with you, then."

The head of the department gave her a mock-salute, swung his jacket over his shoulder, and strode out into the night.

Florence filed away a few reports, expression thoughtful. She wondered where the teasing, happy man she'd been so charmed by had disappeared to. Oh, she knew he was overparticular and frequently demanding when it came to his patients' care, but lately, the tension radiating from his office… the doctor was almost impossible to work with. He was moody with his staff, always saving his gentler words for the sleeping old man down the hall.

The receptionist snorted. She wasn't sure what the point of conversing with a man in a coma was, but she knew her place. Florence wasn't about to begin asking questions, not when all she had to do was hold onto her job for another couple months at most.

…

Jacen shut the door quietly behind him, treading softly into the living area. He'd brought food from the mess hall – rice with dried fruit on top, which generally revolted Rei, but he made her eat it anyway – and pears that the nurses had picked at the orchard. Balancing the tray carefully, he sat down by her bed to wait.

Normally, the doctor managed by bringing a medical journal or something else to read, but today he'd been in such a hurry – to get here and get out – that he'd forgotten.

Try as he might, Jacen's gaze persistently wandered back to her reposeful features and he exhaled deeply. He had to get over this before he did something that hurt both of them.

Perhaps not overconfidently, he didn't doubt that he could seduce Rei if he wanted. She was far from a "cold fish", as the guard had crudely put it. Simple lust was an easily handled matter, and several camp officials he knew surreptitiously scratched the itch. Nobody batted an eyelash, so long as such liaisons were kept hushed.

Unfortunately, what Jacen wanted from Rei was not so easily obtained.

It was good that she was still angry with him, good that she thought he scorned her. It kept them both from talking, from asking questions.

Jacen squeezed his eyes shut, pained, her face as unattainable for him as any chimera. Her sooty lashes fluttered for just a moment before Rei moaned softly and turned on her side, back to him. His knuckles whitened over the armrests of the chair, and there was a soft pop as the old fabric came loose.

…

The girl awoke for just a moment in the space between two dreams, unsealing her sleep-wet eyes to get her bearings. His hazy form by her bed…Rei opened her mouth to tell Jacen she was too sleepy to eat when she finally got a good look at his features.

His head had fallen back wearily, eyes tightly shut, full lips twisted; Jacen's fingertips dug painfully into the armrests, face drawn with some unseen affliction.

For just a moment, in Rei's haze-tinged vision, he seemed as one cast from heaven, begging for God's mercy. The tiniest of whimpers escaped her lips, and she prayed he hadn't heard it. She squeezed her eyes shut just as his began to open, not daring to meet his gaze.

The anguished lines, the bloodless half-circles of his fingernails, the unfulfilled curve of the lips…

In her life, Rei had seen a man in love only once before. _Papa._ How he had once looked at her mother, like her beloved face was a constellation printed on his eyelids, a map guiding the blood through his veins…

…

Jacen waited another ten minutes or so. Rei slept like the dead, though, and he wasn't going to be able to check up on her grandfather at this rate. _I'll just leave the food here and go,_ the doctor thought. He left the tray on the nightstand and grabbed his jacket off the doorknob as he left, breathing a sigh of relief as he went.

Rei sat up the moment the door shut behind him. She reached unsteadily for the tray before realizing that her appetite was completely gone. Instead, the girl stretched her hand out and switched off the lamp.

She sat unmoving, unblinking in the darkness.

…

Jacen collapsed into his seat by the elderly man's bed, barely needing to look at his patient to know there was no change.

"You know why I'm here, don't you?" he addressed the still form.

Grandfather didn't answer, and Jacen leaned in suspensefully.

"Because I can't stand being alone with your damn granddaughter," he fell back again, rubbing the back of his neck. He didn't feel quite safe pouring out his troubles to the girl's grandfather, despite the fact that said grandfather couldn't hear a word of what he was saying.

"At least you don't talk back," Jacen sighed, before sobering. "I don't mean that, old man. Don't hold it against me. I wouldn't be doing all this shi – ah, stuff – for you if I didn't want you to wake up, would I?"

His patient's breathing was slow and regular. Jacen hated the mechanical sound of it. He dug his nails into his palms. Since this elderly man and his granddaughter had entered his life, the world had become too complicated. Somehow, just sitting here, talking about things…it helped clarify his thinking. Grandfather had that soothing effect on him, even when unresponsive. Jacen remembered their brief chat in the barracks with a faint smile, so long ago.

Accustomed to his family's embittered old battleaxes and power brokers, starched stiff in Charvet – Rei's dwarfish grandfather, clad in a simple chambray shirt, smiling in welcome…it was something altogether new and refreshing to him. Despite the slightly broken conversation, Jacen found the man to be sharp-witted, with none of the lethargy of elderly age. He was not educated or wealthy, but he was easy to love, and the doctor had fallen under his unassuming spell within minutes.

It was clear that he adored Rei, just as she doted upon him – they were proud people, as dependent upon each other as they were independent of anybody else.

Jacen lacked that closeness with his parents and grandparents. Even his bond with Andrew had sometimes felt strained, although in the end he had loved his brother better than anybody else. Andrew was long gone, but Jacen could not lose another person he cared for. They were few enough.

"You're killing me, old man. See, I've got something to prove. I think…you're not like other internees. Some of them, it's like they've got nothing to live for at all – you know what I mean, it doesn't matter to them what happens. But you…you've got everything." The doctor thought of Rei's rare, husky giggle, made rough by disuse. "I guess I'd like to get to know you better. And you know, I've got a reputation to uphold." He smirked, but his lips were tight with desperation. "So, if I can save you…" Jacen exhaled shakily, knew he was rambling, "if I can save you, I don't know what will happen. I just know…I have to do it."

_I have to do it._

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	9. Bittersweet Paper Things

I can haz Sailormoon?

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**Twilight Bastille: Chapter #9 – Bittersweet Paper Things**

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_Move._

Rei stared grimly down at her feet, encased in a pair of graying slippers that had gone unused for more than a week now. She'd already spent about five minutes hauling herself into a sitting position on her bed; it had been no easy task.

The girl wiggled a toe, willing the pins and needles away. _I am going to walk into the mess hall and get myself tea if it kills me._ Rei was going to need some kind of liquid encouragement for when Jacen arrived and found her out of bed.

She nibbled her lower lip nervously. Today, Rei was going to have to tell him she didn't need his assistance anymore.

Rei didn't want to be alone with him. _Not when I know how…how he feels about me. I can't put him through that._ She sighed. _Be honest with yourself. You can't put yourself through that, either. If he ever – acted on it – _Rei tried very hard to quash her graphic imaginings – _do you really think you would stop him?_

Rei was not decorously afraid of lust, as her Catholic classmates had been – on the surface, at least. She'd dealt with the reality of it since she'd matured into adolescence, since she'd first understood that she was beautiful. Exotic, at least. American boys were infinitely more demonstrative than were Japanese classmates back home, and when she had come here, she had just begun to blossom. Lewd suggestions to "the Jap girly" were easily put down, though. And from the moment she had met Jacen, she'd guessed he might be attracted to her, intrigued by her odd eyes, her lithe shape.

All was mayhem with Jacen. Sometimes he teased her with nothing more than companionable affection; other times, when he thought she couldn't see, he watched her with such masculine hunger that Rei could feel his need inked into her skin. He played the parts of the friend, the tyrant, the lover, the professional, all with such ease that Rei never knew where she stood. Jacen had a thousand masks to hide behind, but she knew she'd seen his true face last night. That kind of suffering was inimitable, even for the most consummate actor.

What she had seen in written plainly in his anguish was clearly more than just desire. It was hauntingly familiar, something Rei could remember shining between her parents long, long, long ago, a vague impression more elusive than memory.

"What are you doing up, Rei?" The doctor's familiar voice shook her from her musings, bland but tinged with annoyance. Rei could sense his mercurial shifts in mood as easily as she could discern her own. _In some ways, I know him better than I know myself._

"I was hungry," Rei answered, caught off guard by his arrival. She didn't want to look at him, but her face turned to the door anyway, unwillingly, as though he was the sun. Jacen stood haloed in light, completely filling the narrow doorway. Rei couldn't quite make out his shadowed features, but she guessed, quite accurately, that he was displeased.

_Too bad. Nothing I do makes him happy._

She braced herself and stood in a quick burst of energy. Rei's knees wobbled, but she began to walk anyway, praying that she looked well enough to convince his trained eye.

Jacen's lips compressed into a thin line, and he covered the room in two strides, reaching out to steady Rei, turning her to face him. "Have you lost your mind? I told you to stay in bed – "

This wasn't what she had planned – this wasn't the cool little speech that she had prepared to recite from her corner. In light of her earlier anxiety, his firm, warm grip around her slender wrist completely unbalanced her. She attempted to yank herself from the doctor's grasp. When Jacen didn't let go, she pried at his fingers with her other hand, her breathing shallowing out. Rei knew – _knew _– she was behaving strangely, but unreasonable terror chased away rational thought. She tugged harder.

Jacen didn't release her, instead reaching out and plucking her other wrist from the air. He frowned at the tension he felt there; the girl trembled like a butterfly. "Rei," the doctor spoke her name firmly. "Look at me."

Her eyes jumped to meet his, instinctively responding to the command. Jacen read the apprehension there, _so unlike his unflinching Rei._ His irritation fell away like an old skin.

"Hey…hey, pigeon," the doctor's voice gentled, hoping he didn't sound too ragged at her nearness – it was beginning to unravel him – "what is it?"

One look into those silverblue eyes and Rei forgot she'd ever thought up a speech for him.

"I – I don't want your help anymore," she faltered. Regaining her some of her customary aplomb, Rei added more normally, "I mean, I don't need it." _I sound weak,_ she thought disgustedly. _Like I don't mean a word of it._

He cocked a pale eyebrow, and Rei felt her hard-won composure crumble at his familiar expression. "You can't walk from one end of this puny-ass room to another and you're telling me you don't need my help?" Jacen saw the flash of fear in her eyes. _She's scared – why?_

"That's right," Rei said brusquely. "And – "

"Hold up," the doctor interrupted. "What is this really about, Rei? What are you afraid of?"

"I'm not afraid – "

"Bullshit. Don't lie to me – Christ, you're shaking like a leaf…" Jacen caught her swift glance at his hands wrapped around her wrists, and then back up again. There it was. That _look,_ spectral in her violet eye, gone in a split second, and he knew. _That's all it took,_ he marveled. _A moment of indecision, an unsighed sigh, a twitch of muscle and I understood. How well I know her, my Rei…_

_She knows I love her._

"So…that's it," Jacen exhaled. "You don't want me…" he paused, "…around, then."

That weighty pause spoke volumes, and they both understood its import. Rei shook her head almost imperceptibly, hanging onto her restraint by a single thread. "I don't," she managed, almost choking on the _lie, yes, you know it is._

It was hard to watch his face change, like staring into a dying sun. She hurt to see him hurt, now, after everything that had passed between them. Her nails dug into her palms until she couldn't feel the dull sting anymore. Rei waited for him to drop her wrists, to step back.

To walk away.

"Then before I go, Rei, you've got to answer me," the sound of his husky voice surprised Rei.

"What is it that you're afraid of?"

Her lips parted instinctively, ready to give their answer before Rei realized she had nothing to say. She thought of how her father had once looked at her mother, how Jacen had looked at her last night. An emotion so transient that suffering its loss far outlived savoring its beauty. How could she explain? _What if I said yes to you today? You'll leave me. When I look for you, you'll be gone._

The doctor smiled sadly at the sudden turmoil in her twilit eyes. He'd never thought to touch the thousands of secrets hanging from those black lashes before, but today, Jacen knew he held just one of them. He leaned in, whispering against the edge of one sea-salt eyelid. The space between their bodies was as thin as silver thread, but still perceptible, an insurmountable divide.

"When you know, Rei, come and tell me. I'll be waiting." Jacen's voice gained strength. "I'm not going anywhere."

His mouth brushed against hers, tenderly painting her lips the color of longing, of mourning, of patience. So light against her skin, his touch felt like grasping at handfuls of the dawn. Rei's hands feathered hesitantly against his chest, and he covered them with his own, cupping his heartbeat in her palms, a silent appeal. The kiss was as chaste as prayer, but he stepped back quickly. Drinking in like triumphant wine the sight of her closed eyes, her parted lips, her quickened breath, Jacen left.

The girl opened her eyes, bright sunlight glinting off her wet lashes. She touched her lips wonderingly, as though they were mysteriously changed, their surface gilded by alchemy. There was nothing different there that she could feel, yet Rei knew that she was irrevocably changed.

She shut the door with a weak hand.

Would she ever see him haloed there again?

…

For the first time in weeks, Rei realized that she was starving; she fell upon the below-average food in the mess hall with a vengeance. After eating something, she felt considerably better, but she was no closer to resolving her mental tangle than she had been before. With nothing else to do, and for the first time not the least bit interested in cleaning, she tried to distract herself by going through their older possessions, their most precious relics. A smudged photo album caught her attention, and Rei spent the next few hours watching herself grow up on thin, glossy vellum. She hurriedly flipped past the early ones her father had snapped of her mother – laughing, nose buried in cherry blossoms, kissing the top of Rei's infant head, standing primly next to Grandfather with mirth in her gaze, directly upon the photographer. _Grandfather was so old, even then,_ she thought ruefully as she closed the album. _I never noticed; he was so full of energy, so full of love that it made him seem young to me._

It was time to check on Grandfather, whom she hadn't seen for several days….but the last thing she wanted right now was to run into Jacen again. _He won't show today of all days, you coward._

Eventually, she knew, she would have to sort through the bewildering mess of her emotions. Rei did not like to think of herself as someone who ran from her demons, but since she had met the doctor and Grandfather's health had begun to fail, she knew she had searched for every opportunity to avoid thinking about her problems. Now, she was paying for it.

_Sometimes, I think…I don't even know who I am anymore._

By this time, she had reached the hospital and was walking inside without any conscious thought as to her location. At her grandfather's door, Rei halted at the sound within, the words indistinct, but the voice altogether familiar. She moved to the window, eyes wide.

Jacen.

_What is he doing here – today – after what happened…?_

He was sitting in his usual spot, stretching and rubbing his eyes as though he'd been asleep, speaking to Grandfather. Rei realized with a start that the doctor been there for a few hours, at least.

_Why?_

She touched her fingertips to the windowpane, tracing the golden cap of hair, unaware of how closely she imitated Jacen's gesture of only a week or so before.

_"Speaking," _Jacen had told her ages ago, when Grandfather had first fallen ill_, "is often therapeutic for comatose patients. They can recognize and respond to familiar voices, so talk to him as much as you can. Tell him anything – but be careful," he winked. "He might remember what you say when he wakes up."_

So he came in during his off-duty hours and spoke to the elderly man like he was his friend, or his son. _I never knew…_ Rei wondered what he confessed to her grandfather, if he told him what he did not tell her_._ Something in Jacen's features told her that he needed this exercise, perhaps even more than she did.

Her train of thought was cut short as Jacen rose, resting a gentle palm upon the old man's forehead before he made his way to the door.

Rei hurriedly backed away, rounding the corner just as Jacen walked out of Grandfather's room and in the opposite direction. She sighed in relief as he turned and vanished from sight, and Rei crept back around, ignoring the odd glance a passing nurse gave her.

Shutting the door carefully behind her, Rei turned to face Grandfather, inhaling the lingering scent of Jacen's musky cologne. She paused a moment, enjoying the sensory pleasure – one she wasn't sure she would have again – and strode briskly to his bedside.

"Grandfather," she began, relishing the familiar sight of his face after a week apart. "Grandfather, I'm so sorry I haven't been here all week, I've been sick, but I need to talk to you, need to know – "

Rei broke off sharply. Was her tired mind playing tricks on her? In her happiness at seeing her grandfather in at least the same condition, if not better, she'd placed her hands over his, squeezed gently.

She could have sworn she felt his fingers moving beneath hers.

"Gr – Grandfather?"

Again that slight movement, and Rei felt a wild surge of…of something she couldn't even begin to describe rising in her chest, a feverish dizziness. Oh, God, after all this time, all her prayer and work and worry – was it real?

"Grandfather? Can you hear me? Do you know who I am?"

Another tiny twitch, and she could hear the faintest wheezing in the elderly man's rusted throat, like an ancient engine forced back into use, a creature rising from a long hibernation. Rei took his hands in hers, chafing the cool fingers with her own, standing and leaning over him in her excitement.

"Grandfather?"

There it was again, that flexing of the fingers between her palms, and before she could say another hushed, thrilling word, his eyes shifted, blinked once, and then opened slowly, as simply and clearly as an infant first brought into the light.

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	10. Interlude

Sailormoon is not mine.

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**Twilight Bastille: Chapter #10 – Interlude**

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"Grandfather," Rei breathed reverently, smiling down into his ancient face,_ he looks beautiful, doesn't he?_ "Oh, God, you're…" Shock and joy battled for sway over her voice, and she trailed off, letting her silence speak for her.

Grandfather tilted his head almost imperceptibly, wrinkling the tightly folded white sheets beneath him. The smile glowing from those filmy, aged eyes struck Rei as something almost divine in its happiness. His hand beneath hers flexed just enough to feebly grasp her fingers, and she understood immediately that he was too weak to move much more than that. He murmured something quietly that she couldn't quite catch, and she leaned close to hear his words.

"Rei."

"Yes," she said softly, tremulously.

"Rei…I…headache…" he gave her a faint grin, a spark of his old humor shining through.

She laughed huskily, wild joy settling like snowflakes in her breast, melting into the sweetest contentment she'd ever felt. "I'll bet, Grandfather. Don't worry about a thing. From now on, everything will be all right. You'll see…" Rei continued.

Unnoticed by her, Grandfather's face grew somber again. He watched her face, made young again by her rapture, and quietly loathed himself for what he was about to do.

"Rei…child, listen…carefully – " He coughed, a parched, hollow sound rising from the dried recess of his chest.

Her brow furrowed at his words. She realized that he had something of some serious import to say, probably several things, questions that needed to be answered after his prolonged sleep, but couldn't this wait until he was better?

"Grandfather, shhh, you need your rest…"

He laughed harshly, compressing her hand for silence. "Rest is exactly what I've had enough of, child." His voice seemed to gain in strength with use. "The things I want to tell you…take time that I don't have."

"What?" Rei whispered, that familiar fear constricting her chest again, a vise crushing further every moment. _Time that I don't have._ She felt her fleeting happiness receding, evaporating in the lazy afternoon's heat.

His gaze sharpened, focusing on her bruised-petal eyes. His Rei was much changed. She looked so broken by his side, so much like the hurt child he'd scooped from the mud and held to his heart years ago. There were shadows beneath her lashes that spoke of more sorrows than just exhaustion. Her girlish beauty had faded, something subtly changing before his eyes, a refinement.

Grandfather's tone was gentle. "These are borrowed moments, Rei. They are not mine to live."

"No –" the cry was ripped from her before she could seize it back, and he interrupted his granddaughter sternly.

"At my age, child, not all the medicines in the world could help me. You should know this. Hasn't the future always whispered its secrets into your ears? When did you stop listening?"

Rei didn't answer, her head bowed. She didn't want to believe him, wanted to bury herself in his long, loose clothes like she'd done as a child and beg him to take back his words, but she knew. What she'd refused to see when he woke was now written plainly on his pensive face. That glow of the divine was just that – the mark of a dying man.

She was dimly aware of the fact that she should have been weeping, but somehow the betrayal of all her hopes these last few weeks seemed too great for that. Some tightly wound duct within her didn't allow for tears before others. Rei had never cried where anybody could see her since as far back as she could remember. It was too late to start now, wasn't it? Grandfather watched her silently for a moment before speaking.

"You cannot run from the truth, Rei, no matter how unpleasant. Sometimes it is a demon you must face."

She looked up then, startled by how closely his words echoed her introspective thoughts. Despite his gentleness and good humor, she knew, Grandfather would rather die than give up his dignity by running from his fears. He expected the same from her. Rei straightened her spine. She would make him proud now, when it mattered the most.

"I'm sorry, Grandfather," she said quietly. "You're right – I've been a coward. I didn't want to see what was happening right before me – I just thought – " Rei broke off, trying as always to compose herself.

Grandfather shook his head, smiling slightly at the wall she'd tried to slam over her too-expressive features. "You hoped, I know. You hoped and worked, and you stayed here and spoke to me while I slept. I heard you in here," he attempted to touch his temple, but succeeded only in a frail gesture, "sometimes. You and Dr. Amos have given so much. And I am grateful – " he coughed again, a loud, startling sound. " – but Rei, it is my time. And there is no need for you to sit there with your stone-face," he added teasingly. "I know you well. I see the tears you won't shed before me. Even a samurai has his weaknesses. Just because you must confront your demons, child, it does not mean you must always keep a brave face."

There was a brief silence as Rei relaxed slightly, her distress still barely held at bay, visible in the tremble of her lips.

"I don't know what else to do," she admitted quietly, contemplating some unfixed point beyond her grandfather's face. "I've lost myself."

"At least," he continued, seemingly ignoring her confession, "I've lasted long enough to see this. You've grown, child, so much stronger than your mother. But you have her beauty," he smiled, "it's in the eyes, that same wildness. I've lasted long enough to see you become a woman, cherished by another. To see you love."

Her gaze snapped back to his. "I – "

"What did I tell you about my headache?" he admonished sternly, his black eyes sparkling. His voice seemed frailer than ever to Rei's panicked ears. "Your voice is like a hammer against my poor skull! I won't have it, Rei. Out with you. I need my rest, like you said."

"G-Grandfather?"

"A bit closer, before you leave," he said quietly. Rei leaned in, her cheek nearly pressed to his. His hand pressing against the nape of her neck, he pulled her just a little nearer, pressing his dry lips to her cheek. "Go. Good night, my child."

"Good night, Grandfather," she whispered helplessly into his ear. Rei didn't want to move, didn't want to leave and come back and find him gone. His hand, entwined in her hair, relaxed. For one agonizing moment, she thought she had lost him; her breath seemed to be a whistling knife in her chest. Then, she felt his rising and falling chest, steady against her arm, and the fear subsided.

Not wanting to disturb his rest, she painstakingly removed herself from his loose embrace, taking care not to make any noise or move overmuch and wake him from his sleep. Finally, Rei stood, her dry eyes on her grandfather's still form.

She never knew afterward how long she stood there, feasting her eyes on him. When the nurse quietly informed the girl that she needed to make some adjustments, Rei turned and walked woodenly from the room, shutting the door as gently as possible behind her. Her walk to her barracks seemed to last an age to her, but finally, Rei was undressed and in bed. She left the sheets crumpled beneath her, window wide open to allow the moonlight in. She did not move, did not fall asleep. She waited. The hours passed slowly.

…

It was very late when she knew. Without hesitation, Rei swung her legs over the edge of the bed, pulling on a dressing gown over her shift. She left her shoes by the door, quietly gliding out into the still night. There was no sound of crickets or coyotes; only the murmur of her gown past her bare feet. Had anybody seen her, she might have been thought a ghost, but the desert was seemingly spellbound. All were asleep.

This time, her walk back to the hospital seemed to take no time at all.

The doors were never locked at night; such security precautions had long ago been forgotten by the lazy. Rei made her way down the hallway, no longer needing to count the doors in her head. She stopped at his door, pushed it open.

Grandfather lay inside, just as she'd left him. No stirring of breath lifted his chest. His skin was deceptively warm.

She took two steps forward, then two more, then three. When Rei reached the edge of the cot, she sat down in her chair, exactly where she'd left it. She leaned forward, just as she had hours before, and rested her head on his still chest. Her arms pillowed her face, long black hair falling over the edge of the bed to brush the floor.

_Good night, my child._

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	11. Red Rain

I don't own Sailormoon.

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**Twilight Bastille: Chapter #11 – Red Rain**

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Rei clutched her prayer beads closer, wishing that the charade was done. The soft chants of the priest barely reached her consciousness. She felt strangely detached from the funeral rites. These crumbling ashes and murmured words had nothing to do with Grandfather. Her goodbyes had been said; she had felt with her own hands his spirit depart from his bones. From that point onward, formalities and ceremonies seemed hollow, unable to convey the depth of the void.

A few neighbors stood with her, all similarly dressed in black, their heads bowed but watching from the corners of their eyes for signs of her sorrow. Rei could give them none. Her face was tight with exhaustion, but she stood steadily, her dry eyes on the gold-fleeced horizon. _Where he must be now. Somewhere free of his pain, his ancient body's cage. _Their friends and acquaintances expected to see her crying for him, but in truth, her grief was not for his loss. It was for hers.

Two days had passed, spent preparing for a funeral that had to take place before the body began to decay in the early autumn heat. Immediately after the ceremony, Rei went home. Her body seemed to understand what needed to be done; even as her mind lapsed into vacancy, her hands automatically unwrapped the packages of food well-wishers had left. She ate slowly and methodically, her lips closing around the chopsticks completely each time until the bowl was emptied. Rei rinsed off the dishes, quickly bathed to rid herself of old sweat and unspilled tears, and fell into a dark, dreamless sleep.

She awoke soon after, so tired still that she ached to even think about standing up. Rei stood up anyway. _Will I ever feel awake again?_ she wondered bleakly, unable to remember the last time she'd felt rested, alive, functional.

There was a rap at the door, and in the space of a moment, Rei was transported back in memory, the day Jacen had come to deliver Grandfather's medication…a sudden blow of crushing anguish stole the breath from her lungs, and Rei leaned against the wall, swallowing her sobs. Taking a few seconds to control herself, she opened the door to a familiar face.

"Miss Rei…oh, Miss Rei, you look so different, are you…?" Hotaru faltered, her eyes wide.

"I'm…I'm fine, Hotaru," Rei managed. She hadn't spoken to anybody in two days; words tasted strange in her mouth.

"I just…I wanted to come talk to you," Hotaru stammered, chin trembling. "I wanted to see if you needed – no, wanted help with anything. I can do anything around the house, so you don't have to be so busy. I know you've been tired, and I…" her words broke off, split apart by tears.

"Come here, Hotaru," Rei said, and the girl came immediately into Rei's arms, moisture silently tracking down her pale cheeks.

"I know, Miss Rei, I remember…I remember when it happened to me," she whispered against Rei's chest, her warm breath fitful. "I thought I could help…"

"I'm grateful…but I know it hurts you to think about what happened to your parents, and I don't want you upset on my account," Rei held Hotaru at arm's length. "Go home for now, and we'll talk when you're ready to talk. When I'm ready to talk. All right?"

"I'm sorry," Hotaru said, fiercely scrubbing at her face with the edge of her sleeve. "I'm being so stupid…"

"Shhh," Rei soothed. "Don't worry about a thing. Thank you. For thinking of me."

The girl nodded tearfully, backed away, faded into the dark.

Rei shut the door, leaned heavily on it, eyes closed. _What will I do now?_ she wondered blankly. _Is this how I'll live out my life? This state of nothingness, and then these jaws of memory snapping at my heels? Will I always be running, barely a step ahead of my pain?_ What had she been thinking of – what had that knock at the door had reminded her of? _Grandfather's medicines,_ Rei thought, swallowing.

_Jacen._

He hadn't been at the funeral, had he? Rei didn't know; she hadn't been looking for him. She slipped a housecoat over her nightgown, not bothering to pull her hair into its familiar knot. Some familiar instinct told Rei she had to see him tonight. And in truth, she couldn't stand to be here, locked in a house that still smelled of Grandfather's shirts and soap. Everywhere she looked, something he had touched, laughed at, exclaimed over…Rei felt the waves coming in over her head, felt herself gasping for air. She yanked the door open and stumbled out into the cool night breeze.

By the time she had reached his door, she had managed to calm herself. Hoping Jacen wasn't at the hospital, she rapped at the door.

No answer.

Rei tried the handle without hesitation; she was far past propriety by this point. Surprisingly, the door immediately swung open. She took a step inside, blinking in the dim light. The bed and recliner were barely visible in their corners; a thick pall of cigarette smoke hung in the air. The doctor sat at his desk, only in his shirtsleeves, back to her.

"I'm sorry, Rei," his words were hoarse. "I've failed you, haven't I?"

…

He turned to face her, and Rei's eyes widened perceptibly. His golden mane was disheveled, hanging over his forehead; faint stubble glinted in the light. Jacen clutched a perspiring glass of whiskey; obviously, he had been drinking for some time now, judging from the amount of alcohol remaining in the handle, but his blue eyes were haunted, sober.

"Jacen…Jacen, are you…?"

He gave a short bark of laughter. "Drunk? No. I wish I was, but I've always held my alcohol too well for my own liking."

Rei didn't know what to say.

"So, tell me, pigeon. Have I failed you? Your grandfather is gone…and I let him go." Jacen watched hungrily for her reaction; Rei's lips twisted, compressed in pain. "I tried, Rei…but obviously not hard enough. Does that make you hate me?"

"No," the girl whispered. She hadn't expected things to get antagonistic this fast, but considering what had happened at their last meeting, perhaps she should have.

"No? Well, that's one less person, I guess, but I damn well hate myself. I promised you something, him too, and most of all, I promised myself…To prove something, to give us all a miracle. And I fucked up. You were right about me the first time you met me – "

"Shut up, Jacen" Rei interrupted, taking a step closer, her eyes burning into his. She couldn't stand it any longer, this _drip-drip-drip_ of acid suffering. "Don't make what you did cheap. You gave him his dignity – maybe that's a failure to you, but it wasn't to him. How dare you talk about his life like it's just another mark in your tally of patients – successes or failures? Wallow in self-pity all you like, but – but leave him out of this. Grandfather wasn't something to prove, just…an old man who'd reached his time…and there was nothing you could have done – "

"There _has_ to be something, something that would have worked," Jacen ranted, rising from his chair. "Don't give me that bullshit about _his time_, Rei, because I don't believe it. I never have."

"Just because you're a doctor, it doesn't mean you can reduce him – or anybody – to a bunch of parts! He was at peace, Jacen, I saw it in his face. He wasn't some broken machine you could have just fixed up – "

"And what about you, Rei?" his voice was ragged. "What about you? Are you a machine? Is that why I don't see you crying?" Jacen reached for her arms, his clenched grip painful. She cried out as he yanked her closer. "Even if you're right, even if it was his time – you can't pretend that you've accepted it, that it's all right," he ground out. "I can see past that, Rei, I'm not fucking blind. It's your loss, isn't it? Why can't you ever let go of this facade, like you don't feel a thing when I _know_ you do?"

"I'm tired," she whispered, her words muffled against his shirt. "I came to you because I couldn't do it anymore, and here I am, still trying…"

"Then let go, Rei."

_Just because you must confront your demons, child, it does not mean you must always keep a brave face._

_Why can't you ever let go of this facade, like you don't feel a thing when I know you do?_

_Then let go, Rei._

The words roared over her head, crushing her in the storm-blue of his eyes, and Rei's next breath was a choking sob. She doubled over, feeling something inside her clenching tight and releasing with every gasp as her tears fell, bitterly alkaline. Rei was dimly aware of the doctor's arm around her waist, his fingers pulling hair from her wet face as he murmured meaningless, soothing things against her ear. Ugly, harsh cries seemed torn loose from her, flooding the room with loss. They took all strength from her, and when they finally quieted, Rei hung from his arms as limply as a doll.

Jacen hauled her up, tucking her head against his chest, and she didn't have the will to protest._ Just weeks ago, I couldn't stand to have him touch me, and now I feel like I'd fall apart if I couldn't hold onto him._ His heartbeat was too rapid, a sharp staccato, and she looked up. The doctor's face was drawn, his irises incandescent on some point beyond the bedroom's walls.

"I wanted to know him." His words had a peculiar, hurried quality, like Jacen couldn't release them quickly enough. "You know, it wasn't really about fixing him or anything like that – it was just…seeing him lying there, I wanted to get into his head so badly, wanted to shake him alive and find out how he felt. What made him smile, what made him tick. It's the first thing they told me not to do when I started my residency – to personally invest in my patients, in their loved ones." He looked down at her, and Rei sucked in her breath, at the rawness in his eyes that mirrored hers. "I couldn't help myself, Rei."

His thumb brushed the tear-tracks from her cheeks, rubbed the salt gently into her lips. She leaned into his touch, letting his palm round her jaw, heat her wet-chilled flesh. Rei's lashes trembled in anticipation as she boldly lifted her mouth to his. The kiss tasted strange to her, like whiskey and penitence. She needed this, this uncomplicated, heated encounter of her lips curving around his Cupid's-bow. For a moment, they remained motionless, Jacen too conflicted and Rei too inexperienced to move past their chaste embrace before his long-denied instincts took over, his hands tugging on her long, black strands for leverage, his mouth coaxing hers open.

_Too late for doubts I've watched and wanted too long,_ their thoughts spilled together, indistinct. Jacen pushed her coat off her shoulders impatiently, pulling her against him. Rei linked her wrists around his neck, standing on her toes, and he felt a jolt of heat in the pit of his belly, fingers splaying across the small of her back. Her nails languidly trailed over his nape. The doctor took his time with insolently unhurried kisses, belying the urgency of his greed. Despite the blue-black night, all in Rei's vision was gold; her skin felt sticky against his, breasts aching where they rubbed his chest, insistent heat coiling her fingers into flame. She pressed herself into him boldly, daring him to touch her, and Jacen broke off the kiss with a sharp oath. Rei made no attempt to back away, her stare challenging.

"Don't try to play games with me," he growled. "I'll win every time."

The silence was thick, fluid.

"It's no game to me," Rei replied quietly, her suddenly vulnerable mouth bruised scarlet. Eyes twilit, devoid of their smoke screens.

His eyes were fierce, their deepest blue, but Jacen's lips shifted tenderly. "Then I'll be as good to you as I know how, pigeon."

He let his palm skim over the curve of her hip and thigh, dragging the frayed cotton of her nightgown up as his fingertips traced the bared lines of muscle and jutting bone. Rei's breathing shallowed out nervously – _he does this with such ease_ – suddenly her hands were pushed into the air as Jacen pulled her nightgown over her head with a soft rustle. He paused for a moment, his eyes lingering over her small breasts, her too-slender waist with a hungry reverence that made her take her self-conscious thoughts back. Impatient, he tugged at her hands, pulling Rei tightly into his chest as they fell into the bed.

The feel of crisp cotton against her bare skin irritated her; she reached for his shirt between kisses and pulled as hard as she could, feeling the seams rip. Jacen's chuckle danced against her lips, trembled against her throat, and she held the lazy heat of it inside her as long as she could, her neck falling nervelessly back as his tongue laved her breasts, teeth tugging the buds into hardness.

His palm smoothed over her curls, the briefest warning before he drove two fingers in. Rei cried out, hips bucking off the bed. Jacen tested a third, felt her edge away in discomfort; mercilessly held her still and worked his thumb over her center until she relaxed. She couldn't hold out any longer, pulling Jacen up by his hair, drinking her own sweetness from his fingertips. Rei's hand encircled him, and she marveled at his unfamiliar, velveted feel - at his visceral shudder as she explored his length. Jacen reached between them, stilling her touch.

"Rei." His words were nearly guttural, scent of musk and sweat feral to her heightened senses. "Rei, I can't – I shouldn't take you like this, like I'm a guilty man looking over my shoulder."

"I can't wait anymore." She could hear the desperation pounding away in her blood, rising to the surface. "Please."

His fingers crushed over hers. "I'll hurt you like this, being your first. I can't promise to be gentle."

Rei could feel the tears coming, bewilderingly, and she blinked them away, reaching up to grasp Jacen's shoulders, pull him closer. "I don't want you to be."

He didn't say a word, and Rei felt his hand release her, allowing her to divest him of his trousers. A few breathless moments passed, nervous, mad thoughts swirling around her head as she watched her lover spread her thighs. She'd never feared Jacen before. She didn't fear him now. The question came unbidden. _What are you afraid of?_

Jacen took her then. _It hurts. Oh, my God, it hurts,_ Rei thought wildly, muscle and skin and bone clenching in pain. When she finally opened her eyes, Jacen was completely motionless, suspended above her, arms trembling with the effort of holding still. His gaze was strangely calm on hers. He seemed to understand exactly what she wanted without a word passed between them; she pulled him closer, let him kiss the wet from her lashes as he thrust deeper, burying himself in her. As pain melted to pleasure, fire to fire, he took control from her as she lost it. One hand curled around her hip, interpreting the subtleties of their movements; the other tangled at the base of her skull, lifting her to his kiss like the sun. He watched her as she writhed beneath him, her eyes shut tight, his eyes dark, thoughtful. And as the sun glowed hotter and hotter, too much for either of them to look at directly, his mind blank with her sex, he thought indistinctly _even if she never loves me, oh God, oh God I will be happy with this, with what she has given._

_I will be happy with this._

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	12. Changing Landscape

Sailormoon is not mine.

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**Twilight Bastille: Chapter #12 – Changing Landscape**

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Jacen could tell that it was already late morning, perhaps even noon as he awoke. Strong midday light poured through the windows into his spare, clean quarters. He glanced down at the dark head mashed against his chest, her warm breath raising tiny goosebumps on his flesh. He shifted slightly as he felt her sleek calves tangled between his knees, and she stirred immediately, lifting her heavy-lashed eyes to meet his. Their gazes locked, and then Rei yawned unabashedly, like a sated housecat, her fingertips rising to just barely cover her small, pearl-sharp teeth.

"How long have you been awake?"

"Not long. A minute, maybe."

Rei dragged her fingernails lightly over his stubbled chin. "Were you watching me just now?"

His irises deepened, piercing blue. "What do you think?"

She looked down then, and there was silence. A few moments passed before Rei broke the stillness, reaching up to him. She pressed her lips to his left collarbone, hard, almost painful, and heard his sharp intake of breath. With that, Rei rose with quick, easy grace from his arms. The wood floor was warm beneath her feet as she walked to the washroom, fully aware of his eyes riveted to her nude form. Jacen propped himself up on his elbows, watching the unconscious dip and sway of her slim, pale hips.

Rei scrubbed her face and mouth quickly over the sink as the tub filled behind her. As she turned off the faucet, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. _Ironic how well-rested I look, isn't it,_ she thought wryly.

She made liberal use of his soap and shampoo, wincing as her fingers caught in tangled hair. His towels were equally fair game, and Rei used two just for her hair, which smelled of his spicy, leathery soap. Jacen was still in the same position she'd left him in, leaning on his elbows, one eyebrow quizzically arched as she emerged from his bathroom as clothed as she'd stepped in it.

"Do you usually walk around your own rooms naked as the day you were born?"

"No," she replied flippantly, sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing the dripping ends of her hair between two towels.

"I'll need some curtains so the guards outside don't get a peek at what they're missing – "

"You're asking me stupid questions," Rei cut in, throwing him an irritated glance. "Why should I bother with clothes if you've already seen everything? Next time I'll just – "

Jacen interrupted her with a short laugh, tugging at her wet mane so that she fell beside him with a soft thud. "I'm only teasing, Rei. Seems to work on everybody else but you."

"Am I everybody else?" she asked lightly, good humor restored.

The change in his tone was subtle, but they both heard it nonetheless.

"No. No, you're not."

There was a brief, tense pause before Rei rolled over, closer to him, elbows resting upon his chest and mouth tense with worry. "Jacen…"

"You should go," he said flatly, staring upward at the ceiling, somewhere past her. "Now, while everybody's probably having lunch in the mess hall. Nobody will notice you. Or gossip."

"I don't care about gossip. Do you? Look at me, Jacen."

Rei had thought he was afraid to look at her for some inexplicable reason, had thought he would hesitate. He proved her wrong, instantly turning his intent gaze upon her, and she saw what was in his eyes. Whatever Rei had meant to say died immediately in her throat. She felt very small, a moth caught in stifling amber, terrified, but unable to look away. He took both of her slender wrists in one hand and pressed them to his chest, and they both felt the jump of his heartbeat, her palms cool against his skin.

"No, I don't give a damn about gossip. I'm used to it. Nonetheless," his voice sounded unnaturally quiet with the roaring in her ears, "you should go."

He released her black strands from his other fist; she hadn't even noticed that Jacen held them until he let them go. She rose from the bed, eyes averted, unusually hasty in her movements, struggling to pull on her wrinkled clothes and twist her hair into a hasty coil. Rei's voice trembled as she shoved her arms into the sleeves of her housecoat. "Look…I don't think I can give you what you want, Jacen."

"Then think again, pigeon, and be careful. You may have already given me more than you wanted." His tone, by comparison, was measured.

Rei's footsteps out the door were hurried and loud, but still he could hear the tearful catch in her breath at his words. Jacen waited until all sound of her was muted by sand and baying wind, and then he rose. She hadn't slept in his bed long enough to leave her smoke-sweet scent, but he suspected that would soon change.

…

Jacen was right. There was nobody wandering about at noon; they were probably all chattering away in the mess hall line. It being Sunday, some were perhaps still at the chapel. Rei made her way back to her own barracks in peace, although her thoughts were in the same turmoil that they seemed to have always been, ever since the good doctor had arrived. Sleeping with him had not resolved any of her emotional confusion, and in truth, she hadn't expected it to.

The moment she set foot in her room, Grandfather's familiar, comforting scent surrounded her, thudding a dull pain in her chest that Rei couldn't imagine would ever leave her. It would soften to a murmur over time, but she knew all too well about grief. It was persistent, now as much a part of her as hands and feet. _Grandfather would have said it was just as essential, too. Grief is the black shadow of memory._ And Rei would not surrender a single memory of him, no matter how hurtful.

Jacen's words of last night had been harsh, but true. She couldn't run from the things that lurked inside her forever. Rei's formidable intuition had always been a double-edged sword – the things she could see with such clarity, she knew she could deny with equal stubbornness. With the unerring eye of a surgeon, of a lover, Jacen saw the ugly things within her, the secrets she attempted to keep, the thoughts she spoke not even to herself; he pulled away what seemed to expose what was. It frightened her to think that Jacen saw her so clearly, that in mere months he knew things about her flawed nature that had taken Grandfather fifteen years to discover, that her father had never bothered to find out. It scared the hell out of Rei, and yet at the same time it pleased her, made her smile.

She was unsure of how to interpret his words of only a few minutes before. _You may have already given me more than you wanted?_ She knew that Jacen fancied himself in love with her. Rei did not think he gave his heart easily, but she also did not think she could ever give hers. She had hoped that was clear. In some ways, she felt older than Jacen, despite the years between them. In nineteen years, Rei had already lost too much. She knew she could not stand to have him, and then lose him too.

"_I'll be waiting,"_ he'd said to her._ "I'm not going anywhere."_

Although…it would be a simple thing, so easy to let him protect her and adore her, to blunt the pain of their mutual wound.

It would be so easy, Rei had to admit, to fall in love.

…

For the past several years, Rei's life had been guided by routine. Some days were easy; all days in recent memory had been impossibly difficult, but they were all dully methodical nonetheless, with chores to finish, work to do, documents to deal with. Now, her life settled into a new routine, but this one she savored because she never knew when it would end. Her days were spent working as a classroom assistant, just as before; Jacen simply forbade her from taking on her grandfather's tasks as well. Working less and eating more, Rei began to regain some of the weight she'd lost over the last month. She kept her barracks clean, just as always, and in her spare time she borrowed books or meditated, honing that strange prescience that Grandfather always insisted she inherited from her grandmother. Rei never forgot to offer prayers for him and her mother. At night, she folded the next day's working clothes and walked to Jacen's barracks.

The door was usually unlocked, and there was always a glass of water for her and a small whiskey for him, both completely ignored because the first thing they would do was make love with a feral desperation that startled both of them. Jacen, of course, had the benefit of experience, but Rei was an eager student, and as the weeks passed, their need for each other only seemed to intensify, to the point where their nights weren't enough and they stole short minutes from the day. Unsurprisingly, Jacen was bolder than she, deliberately running his fingers through her hair, loosening pins and dragging it into the wind as he passed her by at work. Most of the giggling students noticed, as did the white-haired school manager, who clucked her tongue disapprovingly at "the Jap girl's bad manners". Rei frequently brought the smallest children into the hospital for minor playground injuries. They were utterly obvious to the medical staff, the doctor's gaze burning into her skin, the girl's smile demure.

Neither Jacen nor Rei particularly cared who knew and who didn't, but the "secret" distracted them from their mutual loss of only a few weeks before. Such amusements were only a salve; nonetheless, they ameliorated a slowly healing wound. There were frequent occasions that Rei jerked from sleep with a piercing cry, a name that would be nowhere but in her memories, tears dripping salt onto her lips, and Jacen could do nothing but hold her and feel the wet rattle of her breath against his throat, ugly, wrenching sobs that she trusted him to keep secret. He wrapped his palm around the base of her skull, fingers massaging the pressure point until she fell into fitful sleep. And then Jacen lay awake, staring out his window at the barren desert, wondering again and again what he could have done better.

…

It was in the first week or two of September that Rei walked back to her rooms and found a small envelope at her doorstep. There was nothing written on the front save for her name and barracks number in neat cursive. Alarmed, she ripped off the seal.

To Miss Hino Rei:

We respectfully request your attendance at a private consultation this evening at Barracks #11 in order to discuss - lease be there by 5'o-clock.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Rei's lips pursed. They wanted a meeting to discuss what? An entire line had been purposefully blacked out so that she could not read it, and she was completely mystified as to why the camp administrators might want to speak with her. Unbidden, the acid of fear flooded Rei's mouth. Did they know? Would they ask her about her relationship with Jacen? They couldn't do that, could they? She had committed no crimes, broken no rules.

Had she?

…

Four-fifty-eight found Rei in a faded skirt and old abalone-button jacket, mane shellacked into fussy pin curls, waiting in the office at Barracks #11. She'd never been here during her years at Manzanar. There had been troublemakers and rebels sitting in this seat before her, but she'd not been one of them. Rei shifted nervously, the chair's tweed upholstery scratching insistently at her stockinged leg. Exactly one minute after five, Rei heard footsteps briskly coming down the hall, and she looked up to see a tall, chestnut-haired man purposefully enter the room, cordovan briefcase in hand. He was in his mid-thirties, perhaps, despite a boyishly shaggy haircut, and his suit looked expensive, shoes mirror-shined. She stood, mouth dry but expression cool, and he doffed his hat, smiling.

"Chad Winters, ma'am. Miss Hino, if I'm not mistaken?"

"Yes," Rei said as calmly as she could manage, "and it's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Winters. May I be so forward as to ask what the purpose of this meeting is?"

He laughed genially. "I like that. Of course you may. It's a bit of a sensitive issue, actually, so let's close the door – " Mr. Winters did so, further disrupting Rei's peace of mind, " – it concerns your late father's assets and how – "

"Wait," Rei interrupted him, her relief at not being questioned about Jacen instantly tempered by cold, numbing shock. "My father? What's happened to him? Where is he?"

Mr. Winters was staring at her with no small amount of surprise. "You weren't made aware of your father's passing? Assistant Chairman Yutaka Hino was killed in an Allied air raid in Nagoya…some months ago. It was all over the newspapers, so many prominent figures in the old Japanese administration, all gone in one building…Miss Hino, I do apologize…you didn't know?"

"No," Rei said. "No, I hadn't heard."

…

The rest of the meeting passed in a blur; specific details and words of their conversation were completely lost to Rei's recollection. Her father had so long been a faraway specter, a faceless frustration, that it was impossible for her to dredge up any sort of sincere sorrow beyond what she had felt at Grandfather's passing. She was wrung out, dry of emotion, and couldn't spare any more. Regardless, Mr. Winters had gotten across that the chairman's death, while part of a distant battle in a more distant land, would change her landscape considerably.

"He wrote no formal will, so naturally all of his 'friends' and political allies emerged from nowhere, looking for their piece of the pie. His assistant Kaidou couldn't save much real estate for you, but I get the sense you won't be returning to Japan for a while anyway. You've lost all your properties in Tokyo and also the summer home north of Kyoto. Nonetheless, I'd consider you lucky. Thanks to Kaidou's loyalty and forward thinking, a considerable amount of capital was set aside for the chairman's only heir, not long before his death. Hino was a man of significant means. You were forced to resell your ranch in the valley at a loss, just before coming to Manzanar, right? Miss Hino?"

Rei shook herself from her stupor. She couldn't help but feel a vague sense of pity; it figured that her father's so-called friends would only care to make an appearance when there was money involved. "Y-yes? That's where I used to live, Mr. Winters. I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at, here."

"This changes your situation considerably, Miss Hino. Once the paperwork is taken care of…do you realize that you'll be able to buy your home back? To leave here for good?"

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	13. Rhapsody

I don't own Sailormoon.

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**Twilight Bastille: Chapter #13 – Rhapsody**

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The days at Manzanar grew short as autumn breathed her subtle chill over the desert and the news reached expectant ears: the camp would close in November. Little less than two months away.

Far from the eager frenzy that camp administrators had anticipated, the residents of Manzanar seemed weary, reluctantly beginning to pack away their things, pulling up the small religious statues in their gardens, hand-painted signs from their corroded doors. They talked about the inevitable move resignedly, as though they had known it was coming all along, and now they were simply shifting the wrinkles on their faces to accommodate it.

Rei heard the news a week after she'd spoken with Chad Winters, and it only assured the certitude of her decision. She had spent long hours in the office after the lawyer had left, trailing her fingernails like a lover over the crisp white paper and her compact signature upon it. She had her freedom. Rei could pack up and go; it was a simple matter of a day's packing, a few goodbyes, and a hired car. In less than a week she would be back in the valley, back in the old house – _her_ old house…doing what? Arranging and rearranging her knickknacks in a pitifully small corner, feeling small and alone without someone to share the space with? The barracks without Grandfather were bad enough; thankfully, there was not enough space to contain too much grief. Back in San Fernando? Her pain would swell to fill the whole ranch, and she would lose her mind, she knew it. Of course Rei wanted to leave; for years she had pressed her face to the fence and looked beyond. Now that the gates no longer detained her, she hesitated at the very doorstep.

Rei had decided to stay.

She hadn't breathed a word of it to Jacen. Rei couldn't predict what he'd do or say, and she worried that the doctor might gladly encourage her to leave; she feared that he'd tired of her and would be relieved at her precipitous exit. Rei almost laughed at herself. _You want to leave, but you want him to want you to stay? What a child you are, wanting everything, giving nothing._ And in truth, she could bear another month or two here, perhaps longer, if she could spend her days with him. Rei treasured whatever time she still had with Jacen; the thought of picking up and leaving so suddenly caused her inexplicable pain._ I'd choose him over my freedom. You've built your own cage, Rei._ She hoped Jacen didn't notice the new tension knitting her brows, the sudden thirst in her lovemaking. Although she suspected that he probably did, the bastard.

…

Rei allowed him no opportunity to speak, eagerly reaching for his face the moment the door closed behind her, up on her toes to hungrily draw out his lower lip, sighing as his hands spanned her waist. If Jacen noticed any change in his lover that night, he didn't care to ask about it. They didn't speak of Manzanar's closing. Perhaps they both felt the end of their liaison looming near, and contemplated their thoughts in the dark, long after they had finished with each other. With the light of morning, however, Jacen saw the dark rings under Rei's lashes. As she rose from his bed, he gripped her wrist; the girl turned to face him with a cat's abrupt grace.

"Did you sleep?"

"Yes," she said warily.

"Wrong answer." Jacen smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Tell me what's bothering you."

"Nothing." Seeing the look on his face, then, "November," Rei said flatly. "What's going to happen?"

"Ah." He released her hand, falling back, staring up at the ceiling. She sat as well, her back to Jacen, letting him run his fingers through her hair as he spoke. "What do you want to happen, Rei?"

"I was thinking of taking the money I've got," her voice was soft, "and maybe taking a bus to the valley to see who's left. I could stay with a friend, I guess, and try to make up the funds I need to buy an apartment."

There was a pause.

"I could help you, you know," Jacen chose his words carefully. "Some kind of arrangement – "

He couldn't see her face, but her spine straightened tellingly. "I'm not going to take your money, Jacen, you know that, and definitely no arrangements," Rei's tone brooked no argument.

He gave her no warning; Jacen looped a handful of silky hair around his fist and tugged hard, bringing her head down to his level, ignoring her cry of pain.

"Who said anything about taking money? Don't you dare belittle me, Rei – I'm more than your benefactor and you know you're more than a charity case." He stood, shoving away the sheets twined around his hips, walking to the bathroom.

"Jacen, wait!" He didn't turn, splashing his face with water and lathering up. Rei followed. She tentatively touched his shoulder, felt it stiffen beneath her fingertips. Ignoring his obvious body language, she pressed herself close, resting her forehead between his shoulderblades. "Jacen," she murmured against his spine, "Jacen, I'm sorry. Please."

There was no give, no response. _Damn._ Rei hadn't wanted to tell him this, hadn't wanted to open herself to unwelcome questions.

"I didn't mean it about the money…I know whatever help you give me isn't out of pity…and believe me, I'm grateful. But…I don't need it. I lied. I'm not going to a friend's house. I'm going to my old house, mine and Grandfather's."

"How?" His tone was even; he continued to shave.

"A lawyer came here a week ago. He told me my father's dead and I've come into some of his money. I have an inheritance, plus the money Grandfather and I have made the last few years."

Jacen didn't say anything as he put away his razor and soap, and she couldn't see his expression. Rei backed away to lean against the bathroom wall. Finally, the doctor turned to face her. There was a strange, wry smile on his face. He took her shoulders, pulling Rei closer.

"So you're going home, then. I'm happy for you, pigeon. This is everything you wanted."

"I – yes," Rei said softly, not meeting his gaze. She couldn't tell anything from his expression, despite how well she'd learned to read him. Was he relieved? Upset? Regretful?

He gave her a little, playful shake, like a stranger, and it seemed to belie all that had passed between them in the past months. "When are you planning to leave? Hell, why haven't you left already? It's already been a week!"

It took all of Rei's courage to speak. "I'm not leaving." She looked up at him, defiant. _I'll be damned if I let you go so quickly. I'll hold you to me as long as I have strength._ "I haven't gone yet and I won't be going until the camp closes down."

She watched his face closely then, searching for the inevitable questions, hungry for any emotion at all. Jacen gave her nothing. His face was as unreadable as it always had been, and whatever questions he had, he chose not to ask.

"I see," and his voice was very low. He folded her into the warmth of his arms, and Rei choked down a sob, her lashes fanned shut against his chest. "I see."

…

The final weeks passed by, much the same as the last few months had, but with unbearable speed. It felt much as though they were rushing inexorably to some new, untasted place, waiting in the still sunlight – summer's last gasp of heat – for something to happen, neither daring to release their commingled breath. They didn't bother to hide their relationship from the administrators and internees any longer, and there was a strange-sweet flavor to loving openly. Rei stopped working, finally, as everybody was busy packing and organizing, and there were fewer ills for Jacen to handle. They would go to the gardens and rest under the artificially watered trees. Nobody would sit with them for the shame of it, so they were absolutely alone. Jacen would rest his head in Rei's lap, pull the pins from her hair so that the black curtain enclosed them in untimely night. They talked little. There was heaviness in Rei's heart, the weight of many heaped sorrows, and it lent refinement to her features, a subdued adulthood. In Rei, Jacen now saw the woman whose girlish shadow he had chased that first night he'd met her.

…

Most of the detainees had finished packing by November 20th, and chose to spend their last night in camp celebrating. There were small, informal parties in the gardens and in the tea house, and the children sang and laughed as the parents talked quietly amongst themselves, discussing who had a sponsor and where the cheapest land might be found. Some sipped homemade sake and vowed not to leave at all until they were evicted; there was no other place for them to go.

Manzanar's last eve found Rei running her palms slowly over his chest, as though she sought to remember the play of muscle beneath her white hands. It had become the most normal part of her evening, lying in his arms, enjoying his fingers' slow burn on her skin. It was an unseasonably warm night; Jacen's sheets had long been packed away and the traveling clothes they would both wear the next day lay neatly on his armchair. The clothes that they had been wearing less than an hour ago were tossed haphazardly about the floorboards. The moonlight painted their sweat quicksilver, flashed off Jacen's teeth as he spoke.

"You're leaving me tomorrow morning, pigeon."

"You'll be leaving me too, back to Manhattan," she replied lightly.

He smiled in the dark. "That's true. But I didn't have the option of leaving before now."

Sensing where the conversation was going, Rei stilled the motion of her hands on his chest, pushing gently away from him, and then harder when he didn't let her go. "Let's not spoil our last night here talking about this, Jacen," her voice half-pleading, half-commanding.

Jacen laughed, the sound filling the room, and tilted her chin up to kiss her. Rei relaxed into his embrace, thinking she'd won, and nipped at his mouth gently, punishingly. His fingers tangled in her hair, her legs twining restlessly with his, and finally she broke the kiss, breathless.

"Why did you stay, so long after you could have been back home, Rei?" his breath caressed her lips.

Rei opened her eyes, glaring at him.

"I don't know," the words tumbled out in a burst of annoyance.

Jacen's mouth twisted. "You're a ridiculous contradiction, sometimes, Rei, and I can believe half the time you don't know yourself and worse, you don't _want_ to know yourself. But this time – this time, I think you know exactly why you stayed behind, and I think you don't want to tell me."

"You're damn right I don't," she said shortly, desperation tingeing her voice. "So?"

"Why are you so angry? Is it so hard to be honest with me? Or has lying become second nature to you?" his arms tightened around her but his voice was teasing, and neither of them expected the slap that painted his cheek pink in the pale light.

"Oh…" Rei whispered shakily, her eyes wide with shock, "Oh, God, Jacen, I didn't mean it, I'm so sorry…"

Neither of them said anything for a moment.

"I'm not," he said harshly. "At least it was truthful. Nothing you tell me can make any difference now, Rei. We're going our separate ways tomorrow. It doesn't matter anymore – "

"I wanted to stay with you."

There was a long, labored silence. She didn't dare look at him after she'd blurted it out so thoughtlessly.

When she did collect the courage to glance up at him, Jacen's face was pale, and Rei smiled painfully. "So you see, it does matter. I've surprised you for once, haven't I? I want to go to sleep, Jacen. Good night." Then, steeling herself like a soldier leading his comrades into battle for the first time, Rei continued breathlessly. "Do you remember when you asked me what I was afraid of? It seems like a long time ago, doesn't it? You told me to come to you when I could tell you. I'm sure you knew what it was then. I finally know now. I was afraid – no, I am afraid – " her voice rose and dropped erratically, "of this. Of loving you."

She turned her back to him abruptly, her breathing rapid and shallow, and he knew when her shoulders ceased to shudder that she had finally fallen asleep.

Jacen tugged at her sleeping form gently, nestling her into the curve of his body, resting his chin atop her black head. He gazed sightlessly out at the moon, a smile curving his full lips. "At least, pigeon," he murmured, "at least I finally know that you do."

…

By noon the next day, Rei and Jacen were waiting just outside the gates with hundreds of others, all looking for their cars and buses and shuttles. Rei was taking a crowded bus to the valley; an old friend of Grandfather's was waiting to pick her up and take her to her old neighborhood. Jacen had a small van coming to take him to Los Angeles, where he would catch an evening flight to New York. They scanned the hazy road together, and Rei pushed down the brim of her sun hat, protecting her fair skin.

"Miss Rei," Hotaru emerged silently from behind her and touched her shoulder. "Miss Rei, our shuttle is here." She pointed, and Rei could see it arriving, kicking up dust in the distance.

"Thank you, Hotaru," she smiled, and Hotaru grinned unexpectedly back before leaving them alone to collect her things.

"She's lucky," Rei mused, moving closer to Jacen. "One of the families has offered to take her on as a nanny for their babies; their old one died last year…"

"Rei."

She couldn't speak, but her answer was in her dark eyes, and Jacen lifted Rei by the waist, hat knocked to the ground, long hair spilling out gloriously in a river of ink. She flung her arms brazenly around his neck, tangling her fingers in his crisp golden curls. He tasted the sticky sweetness of her mouth, the tears that always salted their kisses. Rei closed her eyes, willing to memory the short-lived rhapsody of these last days. Jacen's lashes brushed hers, her breasts pressed heavily against his chest, and she thought she might choke. He set her down, ignoring the whistles of the guards and Florence's coughing giggle. Rei was breathing heavily, lips swollen, blouse heaving, and Jacen couldn't help his customary smirk.

"I hope you don't let anyone else kiss you like that, kid," he taunted.

"I hope for your sake that you don't kiss anyone else at all, Doctor," she countered, eyes flashing.

"I _will_ see you again," his voice was rough, meaningful.

_It would hurt less if I didn't believe you, but I can't help myself, you've changed me,_ she thought, and she nodded wordlessly, saving the tears flooding her eyes for the journey home. Rei turned to board the shuttle.

She was the last passenger inside; the door slammed shut and the driver started the bus up with a choking roar. Rei sat at the cloudy window and, feeling very much like a cinema heroine, rubbed at it until she could see his face. _Oh, please,_ Rei thought wryly. He was already speaking to someone else, a nurse perhaps. _I knew it. _But as the shuttle's wheels turned round, the doctor looked for her, knowing exactly which dirty window she waited behind.

Something in his intense gaze wounded her, and she could no longer see him through the stinging in her eyes. Rei blinked furiously, trying to make him out clearly before the bus pulled away. He had told her that he would see her again. She did not know when it had happened, but somewhere down the line, she had – _foolishly? too late now_ – begun to believe him.

But if this was to be the last time, Rei wanted to hold that last image of him behind her eyelids – fogged by tears and glass, the luster of his golden curls and skin dulled but his sharp blue glance burning, and she wanted to keep that pain deliciously close to her heart.

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	14. Beloved

Sailormoon = not mine.

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**Twilight Bastille: Chapter #14 – Beloved**

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_The rain had started suddenly, falling in thick sheets from a rapidly clouding sky shot through with bolts of white sun. Now it was dark, but Rei could still hear the rhythmic dripping of the pipes outside, and her eyelids grew heavy._

_"Your grandmother," Grandfather's soft voice filtered through her dim, sleepy consciousness, "she lived through a time of incredible hardship. With her standing, the daughter of a samurai family, she could have lived well. Circumstances dealt with her cruelly. She saw the end of the old ways. And she married me," he concluded with a laugh. "But Rei, listen to me. I can see you're getting sleepy."_

_Rei fought off her drowsiness. "No, Grandfather, please," she begged. "I want to hear more –"_

_"Her story is over, little one," he said quietly. "But listen."_

_Rei listened._

_"She was my whole world, and I thought that she always would be. But sometimes, when I looked into the fire, selfishly, of course, to see her face…" his voice trailed off. "I saw yours instead."_

_There was silence, punctuated only by the tapping of the rain on the roof._

_"Good night, my child," Grandfather finally said, rising with some difficulty on his old knees._

_For perhaps the first time, Rei didn't protest._

_"Good night, Grandfather," she said, and her voice was oddly firm for that of a ten-year-old girl._

_There was a rumble of thunder outside the window. The lights flickered._

Rei woke up.

She lay completely still for a moment, luxuriating in the absence of tears and sweat that had once accompanied so many of her dreams, before stretching out her arms, hearing the joints snap with sleepy satisfaction. The large bed was empty save for herself, and she thought of him with the faintest of smiles.

Rei splashed her face with water and soap as usual, her fluid motions practiced. Dreams of her grandfather no longer brought her pain. With death he'd found something better than momentary happiness; of that she was sure. The look on his face during his final moments was something consecrated, rendered invulnerable to the earthly. She could never forget it. Despite all her moody idiosyncrasies and small, selfish desires, she could not begrudge him that. And above all, Rei was eminently practical. Tears were not to be wasted. Looking into her small, fogged mirror, she saw the face of a woman beloved.

…

The way she walked through the large, airy house that smelled of pine, one would not have guessed that it belonged to her. Her steps still seemed unsure, her hands flying out to touch various surfaces, coming away with the faintest film of dust. Nonetheless, Rei found it difficult to conjure up any real bitterness toward her old and new home. Her father's ghost had been laid to rest; for him she felt nothing, neither guilt nor regret nor sorrow.

She had things to do today, anyway; there was no time to reminisce. Upon learning of Grandfather's death, many Japanese in the area had come by to leave various artifacts – beads, scrolls, and the like – at what they called his "shrine", which was in reality no more than a small stone bench hidden within the inner sanctum of the garden. Hikawa Jinja was long gone, completely refurbished in the wake of the war. Rei, however, with a rush of the old ambition that had made her infamous to her enemies at school, had started making plans and blueprints for the creation of an actual temple on her property. She certainly had enough space to do it, and once it was finished, she would run it. At least temporarily. It wouldn't need more than a few assistants, anyway; it would be perhaps half the size of the house. Grandfather had always wanted her to go on to college and pursue some sort of degree, and eventually she intended to, perhaps in art or literature. Rei knew she could never spend more than a few years in any place; she was a wanderer by nature. But somehow…this felt right for now.

The groundwork had already been laid and parts of the garden cleared; once she had made her decision, Rei moved quickly. Today, she had to meet with suppliers. Life had settled into a rhythm, true, but right now, she was content with stability. _Perhaps I'm finally growing up,_ she mused wryly.

For all the peaceful hush of the morning, Rei's afternoon was hectic. She argued with the suppliers over their shipping prices for stone (_Maybe I should think about going into business instead…_) and managed to settle for at least a higher-quality granite. After that, she lunched with a few of the Manzanar internees who had arrived in the neighborhood with her, and with whom she had formed some tentative acquaintances. Part of Rei would always prefer solitude, particularly when they subtly snubbed her for her relationship with Jacen. Nonetheless, she recognized that without some form of social interaction, she would become unfit to manage a temple devoted to welcoming and comforting strangers.

Later in the afternoon, she picked up a welcome telephone call from Hotaru.

"Hello, Rei speaking," she said brusquely into the receiver.

"Miss Rei?" came the gentle voice over the tinny line.

"Hotaru," Rei smiled into the phone, her harried tone softening. "How is everything?"

"The children are doing well. I'm at the top of the class, Miss Rei," Hotaru's narrative took on a note of unmistakable pride, "and I'm getting a pay raise. I'm saving it, you know," and her voice was scarcely above a whisper as she confided in Rei, "because I'm thinking about…maybe…going to nursing school. Or something. But I'm not sure. How are –"

Rei cut her off. "Wait. And you, Hotaru? How are you?"

There was a pause.

"I'm really good. I'm happy."

"Good. You deserve it."

Their conversation lasted long into twilight; by the time Rei hung up the phone, the stars were emerging from their clouded veil. The warm breeze that wandered freely through the house smelled of Madonna lilies and chaparral. One of the many cats that hung around the garden bumped persistently into the front door, and rolling her eyes, Rei moved quickly down the stairs to deal with it.

She opened the door roughly, pulling her dressing gown tightly around her lithe shoulders, her eyes on the ground to find the offending feline.

There was a pair of boots there instead, connected to a pair of legs encased in informal trousers, and a muscular torso wrapped in a gray cashmere coat that fell cleanly to the knee. His golden curls were mussed, and his blue eyes bloodshot, but still Jacen couldn't help a chuckle at the sight of her startled face, before her elegant features shifted into their usual inscrutable calm, a fierce flash of joy in the violet eye. Rei stepped into the tightening circle of his arms, letting her gown sink loosely from her arms, the rounded curve of her belly that had grown in the last few months pressing insistently into him.

"Were you expecting someone else?" he murmured, his lips exploring the softened planes of her face.

Her words were almost lost against the nap of his coat as he half-pushed her into the house, kicking the door shut behind them. Rei's robe pooled at her feet, her hands slipping deftly beneath his shirt, making him groan.

"Only you."

…

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…

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Quick note: I chose to leave some ambiguity in the epilogue – how long it's been since they left Manzanar, whether this is Jacen returning to Rei for the first time, or whether he's just coming back from a routine day at work. I thought this tied things up nicely without needing to spell everything out. I hope you all enjoyed it – it's been an incredible pleasure to write this story, and I'm planning to maybe write more in this 1940s universe at some point! Stay tuned :D


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